Doctor in the House
by Mistress of the Knight
Summary: The tenth Doctor has arrived but, due to a well intentioned time machine, will not be being nursed back to health in a London flat by Jackie Tyler. If House gets a hold of him though, he might be less grateful for this fact. Dr Who & House M.D. Crossover
1. Chapter 1

A Doctor in the House 

**By: **Mistress of the Knight

**Beta: **None yet

**Rating: **Maybe a slight bit of profanity, but not much else.

**Fandom: **House MD/Dr Who

**Pairings**: None

**Warnings**: Story may contain spoilers up to end of season 2 in House and for the first two series of the new BBC Dr Who series

**Summary**: The tenth Doctor (played by the delicious David Tennant) has arrived but, due to a well intentioned time machine, will not be being nursed back to health in a London flat by Jackie Tylor. If House gets a hold of him though, he might be less grateful for this fact.

**Authors note:** Yes, this is a crossover between two very different shows. I can't resist those weird combinations, just to see if I can get away with it! Think of this like a deep fried Mars bar. Bizarre, yet, hopefully, oddly satisfying. I just hope it won't leave you feeling too nauseous! I shall be doing some medical homework as I go along which will make writing slower, but I'm not a doctor so please excuse any malpractice I might inadvertently perform.

**Disclaimer**: If I owned the rights to any of these shows I would die happy. I don't so I shall die poor instead. I'm sure the owners wouldn't mind me playing with their creations a bit. If they didn't want poor frustrated women to obsess over them they shouldn't have cast such sexy actors!

**Chapter One**

**Hi, Honey, we're….**

The darkness was that oppressive, damp, almost tangible force that you only find under the ground. It was only disturbed in a few isolated points by the soft orange glow of energy saving recessed bulbs that dimly illuminated the squat shapes of scattered cars, and by the sickly green light from a neon exit sign shining in one corner. The silence was complete, but slowly a rising whine started to insinuate itself into the cool, still air. The noise increased in rhythmic swoops until the empty space was resonating with repeating whooshes like the wash of a querulous ocean. The hulking shapes of the vehicles began to take on a clearer form, outlined in a growing blue shimmer that focused gradually into a luminous nucleus in one of the empty bays against one wall. If anyone had been around to witness these unearthly lights and noises they may have felt a little let down by the mundane shape that coalesced within the pulsating blue lights. The solid blue box settled into place with a final creak and then sat, innocently incongruous, neatly lined up between the white lines of the parking space.

The silence was restored for a moment, but was then broken again as the door of the crate crashed open to spill out a young girl of about nineteen, her face flushed and eyes frantic and puffy. She pulled up her mad dash within a few paces, looking around with wild shakes of her head that sent her damp, honey blonde hair swinging up to stick at her tear-streaked cheeks. She looked confused and broken as she raised a trembling hand to her face to clear it. Her voice seemed to loose itself in the quiet of the car park as she whispered to the empty space "Mum?".

She stood huddled for a moment, all the frantic energy of a moment before pulled into miserable stillness. Her arms crept around her stomach as if cradling a bullet wound to the gut. No-one who knew her well as the confident and vivacious young woman that she had recently blossomed into would have recognised the lost and scared child that stared around herself in despairing bewilderment. A soft groan from inside the blue phone box broke her out of her funk and she turned back, almost reluctantly, to the warm stream of light of the open door.

A tousled head poked through, dark chocolate brown eyes blinking in surprise at the gloom of the parking lot. The tall, lanky man leaned heavily on the doorframe as he looked around at his surroundings. He seemed not to see the hand that the blonde tentatively reached out to steady him then withdrew, as if scared to touch the rumpled man in front of her.

"Ah!" he exclaimed in a rather strained voice. "Not quite what I was aiming for. Lacks the charms of the Powell Estate. No graffiti, no empty crisp packets, no smell of urine." He paused briefly, a tight smile flitting over his drawn features. "On the plus side though, no Jackie Tyler or Mickey the Mouth."

The girl didn't respond with her usual mock annoyance at his taunts but instead looked about ready to burst into tears again. She gulped and responded in a voice that was obviously aiming for a casual tone but missed by a mile. "Of all the times for the tardis to mess up, it would be now." She gestured abruptly to his sagging frame, only kept upright by a white knuckled grip on the blue wood of the door frame. "And don't you have a go at my mum! You really need her right now." She paused, a hot tear tracing down one slightly grubby cheek. "I really need her right now" she added quietly, as if to herself alone.

There was a strained silence for a moment then the man called in a gentle, pleading tone "Rose!" he hesitated, then seemed to change his mind on what he was about to say, continuing more firmly with, "just go and find out where we are."

The girl nodded, almost gratefully, and turned quickly to stalk off into the darkness. As soon as she had turned her back to him the man seemed to sag into himself, a look of pain and weariness pulling his boyish features into older, more hollow lines. He held his hand up before his face, studying it as if he had never seen it before. "I'm getting too old for this" he muttered wryly, then pulled himself slightly straighter as footsteps approached out of the gloom.

Rose reappeared in the halo of light cast from the open door of the tardis, still looking flushed but slightly more controlled. "I found a sign" she blurted. "We're in the car park of the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Wherever that is." She shrugged with one shoulder, glancing round her. "Though by the looks of those cars I reckon we're on earth, and 'bout the right century, at least."

The Doctor let out a long heartfelt groan. "Brilliant!" he muttered. "A hospital. And in America! Bloody tardis and it's bossy personality, always did think it knew what's best for me. The last thing I need right now is a hospital."

Rose folded her arms across her chest in a defensive barrier against his irritation. She raised one eyebrow as she looked him up and down, taking in the increasingly sagged slump of a body that seemed shrunken inside a too big leather jacket. "Really!" she snapped "'Coz you could've fooled me!"

The Doctor flicked a scowl at her. "I don't do hospitals" he sulked. "Last time I was brought to an American hospital the doctor messed up so much I ended up in the morgue." He sighed before continuing an a more pleasant tone. "Not her fault I suppose. Nice girl. Ended up saving the world together. Maybe I should look her up." He gasped suddenly as a spasm caused him to hunch over, his arms clutched around his torso. "Maybe now's not the best time" he forced out in a pained whisper.

Rose stepped forward but again pulled up short, her hand hovering uncertainly above the knotted muscles of his shoulder. She flinched as his head whipped around, those deep eyes boring into her with sudden urgency.

"Rose" he hissed through clenched teeth. "You've got to help keep me away from those doctors. I've already died once today. Rather not have to go through that again in some lab somewhere."

Rose threw her hands up in frustration and blurted in an agitated voice "Well that's just great but where else am I …" she broke off with a gasp as the Doctor let out a small sigh then folded to slide bonelessly into an unconscious heap at her feet. She stood staring down at the crumpled body for a moment and then let out a choked noise, a sob swallowed back with a grim set of her lips. "Great." she muttered, staring down at the still body of the stranger who was the centre of her universe. "What am I supposed to do now, Doctor? I can't fly this thing anymore!" she shouted in fear and frustration at his unresponsive form. She spun around, staring into the empty darkness of the deserted hospital car park and let out a slightly hysterical bubble of laughter. "Hello!" she called with desperate sarcasm "Is there a doctor in the house?!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Authors note:** Okay, this is freaky. I swear, hand on heart, that I started this story before I ever heard that House or Dr Who was coming back to British TV. Within a week of each other I've watched a new House episode with aliens in it and a Dr Who episode where he starts out in hospital! Either I have a precognitive subconscious or someone is stealing my ideas! Even the very lines I was going to use! In particular David Tennant has just introduced himself as a Time Lord and was put down for being pretentious. That's exactly how I'd planned a future scene! Couldn't you just picture House saying that with a smirk?! I'd better get on and finish this little story before all the best lines are taken.

Thanks so much Little Moppet and Kesomon for the encouragement. It means a lot coming from people who can really write so well themselves!

**Disclaimer**: As in chapter one. I don't own any of these characters. I just have to rent them by the hour.

* * *

**Chapter One**

**Hide and seek**

Doctor Gregory House's fingers drummed a distracted tattoo on the polished wooden handle of his cane. He stood perfectly still, an immovable rock amidst the clamour of the overcrowded waiting area, gazing thoughtfully after the splash of gold hair he'd glimpsed through the slowly decreasing pendulum swings of the clinic doors. A pensive frown cut deep creases into hollow, heavily stubbled cheeks. His eyes narrowed slightly in thought as he studiously ignored the short, stocky woman in front of him. This was quite a feat considering the fact that she was waving a bawling, red faced chubby child dressed in a twee overlarge Santa suit in front of his face. His distraction was put on hold with a wince as the semi-hysterical mother's demands became shrill to the point of physical discomfort. His arctic blue eyes focused on her with an almost audible snap.

"SHUT UP!" his bellow brought the whole of the room to shocked attention and cut off the woman in front of him in mid outrage. Even the baby paused in its gulping sobs for a split second before settling back into its noisy pattern of screams. "I may be a cripple but I'm not deaf." he continued in a quieter but no less biting tone. "Although at the moment I'd happily trade the ears for the leg. It's not like I'd miss the intelligent conversation."

The dumpy woman blinked for a moment and then seemed to inflate even further with righteous indignation. "Well!" she huffed, "I _really_ don't think …"

"No, you don't." House cut her off abruptly. "You let the tabloids do your thinking for you.." A sneer flashed over his long face. "How else could you come up with a diagnosis of meningitis with no rash, hyperacusis, photosensitivity or Kernig's sign? The only thing you're basing your fevered hypochondria on is that the local rag ran an article on a poor little rich girl who died of meningitis this week." He cast a disparaging look over the woman's bright turquoise polyester shell-suit. "_Not_ something that would be likely to have had a direct effect on you."

House took advantage of the woman's stunned silence to reach forward and gingerly slip a thumb beneath the elasticated waistband of the screaming child's red velour pants. With a grimace he poked one long pianist's finger into the padded depths of the child's diaper. With the barest trace of a smirk he hooked out a wilted and worryingly stained sprig of holly which he flourished triumphantly in the astonished woman's face. The baby calmed down almost immediately, settling back into its mother's arms in red-faced, hiccuping peace.

"Go home." House instructed her shortly, as he thrust the offending foliage into her unresisting hand. "Try to concentrate less on finishing off the egg-nog and more on what centre piece your son is trying to make special friends with."

He turned with a satisfied air to make good his escape before the woman could come up with any complaint. With a remarkable turn of speed for someone who needed to rest heavily on a cane as he walked, he limped quickly to the now static doors of the waiting room. He exited with a flourish, the smug smile that came from knowing that every eye was on him spoiled only slightly by a grimace of disgust as he remembered to wipe his fingers on the rumpled leg of his jeans.

* * *

Doctor Wilson sighed as the article in front of him was viscously bisected by a heavy wooden cane that slammed violently down over the small print. "Hello House, and a Merry Christmas to you too." He muttered in a resigned tone without looking up. With one finger he pushed the cane from the medical journal and continued reading. His concentration was broken again as a long leg, clad in faded denim, was swung up to rest over the crumpled magazine. He looked up to see his friend resting one buttock on the corner of his desk and scowling at him in a not unexpected fit of pique.

Wilson leaned back in his chair, a frown creasing the smooth lines of his boyishly handsome face. "Is there a reason why you've come to stop me catching up on my reading or have you just decided that since you don't have enough work to do the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to clear the backlog?" he asked in a mild tone.

House shot him an evil grin. "What's the matter? Grumpy 'cos you've not got much time off over Christmas?" he asked in mock concern. "It really is too bad! All those inconsiderate cancer patients, they will insist on dying to their own timetables with not a care for the holiday season. Someone should really put their foot down." He tutted.

Wilson raised one eyebrow and gazed placidly at his friend. "I'll be sure to add it to the weekly memo." He muttered, then leaned forward, trying ineffectively to tug the creased paper from beneath the offending thigh. He gave up with the first indications of a growing sense of annoyance. "Is there anything in particular I can do for you today?" he asked with exaggerated patience.

"I'm booored!" House whined, in an excellent impression of a spoiled six year old. "I've served my allotted stint in the clinic. Four brawling nerds, three pissed friends, two rubber gloves and a kid who made love to a tree. There's no way I'm going back into that hell-hole and there are no interesting cases in at the moment. So I want you to come hunting with me." House paused in his rant to look expectantly at the other man.

Wilson threw his hands into the air in exasperation. "I'm _busy_ House! I know that this concept often appears to be beyond your comprehension but some of us actually have a full time job in this hospital." He wiped a tired hand across his face before muttering "Can't you go and annoy your minions? Isn't that mainly what you keep them around for?"

House pulled a face. "They're no fun at the moment. Cameron's throwing a tizzy and turning the office upside-down looking for a lost stethoscope and Foreman is moaning to everyone that somebody went and stuck some sort of movie prop in his parking space. Even Chase is a misery at the moment. He was going on about some blonde girl who was spotted stealing his pudding in the cafeteria at lunch. Probably whilst he was failing to get off with a nurse!"

Wilson allowed a small smile to play over his face. "I can see that you're doing your usual excellent job of spreading Christmas cheer." He commented dryly, before frowning again. "Actually, I'm not having such a great day myself. I'd planned on devoting today to catching up on the latest Oncology journals but half of them seem to be missing." He peered suspiciously at the rumpled man sitting on his desk. "You don't happen to know anything about that do you?"

House placed a hand dramatically to his heart "I'm wounded at the very suggestion!" he exclaimed, his eyes wide as a kicked puppy's. The pose was broken as a flicker of triumph flashed across his face. "But that just proves my point. Something weird is going on here." He reached out his free hand, the one that wasn't still grasping the cane, to take a firm hold of Wilson's arm. "Come on!" he ordered, pulling hard in an effort to get the other man to his feet. "Come and play Watson to my Holmes."

Wilson shook him off irritably. "Go and sort out your own distractions, I'm busy." He snapped, then added, with the faintest glimmer of interest "Do you even know what you're supposed to be hunting?"

House leaned forward conspiratorially, looking both ways in exaggerated secrecy. "Shhh, be werry werry qwiet! I'm hunting blondes!" he whispered in an exaggerated lisp.

Wilson snorted in amusement. "And here I always thought that buxom brunettes were more your type!"

House dismissed his amusement with a negligent wave of his hand. "Ah! You're just jealous because you bagged your limit a long time ago."

Wilson gave his friend a shove, being careful to not push so hard that House wouldn't have time to get his balance on his good leg as he was hoisted from the desk. "Go on then, hunt your blondes. Just try not to get arrested for sexual harassment … again!" he commented dryly, ignoring his friend's wounded look.

House turned towards the door in a huff, muttering loudly under his breath "That was years ago. One little arrest and you never let me forget it." He looked mutinously back over his shoulder. "Besides, she totally had it coming! I mean if she would go around flaunting the most maddening melanoma just where you couldn't quite see it. Unless you yanked her top down…"

The rest of the diatribe was cut short as the door slammed shut behind him. Wilson looked back down with an amused shake of his head, dismissing his friend's antics as he reburied himself in the very dull, but now creased and slightly warm, article in front of him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Authors note:** I know that I haven't been on this site for practically forever, and therefore probably have no right to try to resurrect stories that have been dead for so long they have rotted beyond all recognition. Still, I had a period of introspection recently where I got all annoyed with myself for never finishing anything. My firm resolution is to actually brush off the thick layer of dust from my keyboard and drag both this and my other fanfiction kicking and screaming to some form of conclusion! Hope you bear with me for the ride.

**Disclaimer:** As in chapter one. I don't own any of these characters except in my deepest fantasies.

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Chapter Three

**Next stop … wonderland?**

Rose dropped the crumpled magazine back onto the untidy pile with a groan of frustration. She looked up at the baroque vaulted ceiling of the Tardis, trying to blink back yet more tears. One hand went unconsciously to her neck, easing out the kinked muscles, knotted from hours of fruitless peering. She took a deep, calming breath and then glanced back down, staring balefully at her stack of carefully horded medical journals.

"Suppose it serves me right for trying to get off with Jason Wriggley 'stead of paying attention in biology class" she muttered ruefully. Leaning back on her hands, her fingers hooked through the grating of the steps of the Tardis, she allowed her eyes to drift to the huddled body against one wall. She'd managed to drag the doctor into through the doors before the car park became too full of prying eyes and now had his still form cocooned inside a stolen nest of blankets.

It was funny, after nearly a year of travelling with the Doctor (by her own internal calendar 'cos who could keep track of the outside world) she still had never seen his bedroom. He always just seemed to be there, in the control room, whenever Rose emerged from the chamber that she'd commandeered as her own. Thinking that he might be more comfortable in his own surroundings, even if he wasn't exactly in his own skin, Rose had set about investigating some of the deeper recesses of the labyrinthine machine. She had lasted all of an hour before retreating back to the more familiar environs of the control room with a serious attack of the wiggins. A series of flickering lights, slamming doors and ominous grinding sounds had made it very clear that the Tardis did not welcome any presence other than the doctor's penetrating into its depths. Rose hadn't even attempted to untangle the mess of her emotions about that. Honestly, not six hours ago she and the Tardis had been … well, okay so she was a bit hazy on what exactly had happened when she got up close and personal with the heart of the Tardis, but she was fairly sure that she deserved a bit more than a metallic cold shoulder.

The muttering glare she shot the central command module only lasted a few seconds before she lost the heart for the one sided diatribe. No matter which way she cut it, she was on her own in this one. Well actually, she thought, letting her gaze linger on the achingly unfamiliar face, she wasn't, and that was the problem.

She levered herself to her feet and stepped over the barricade of incomprehensible jargon that she'd accumulated to gingerly inspect the face of the stranger who was her entire world. It was an interesting face, perhaps not classically handsome, but it had a certain appeal. She could imagine, on a night out with the girls in some different place and time, that it could have scored fairly high on the "I'd shag that" ometer, once the Malibu & cokes had started flowing. Right now though, all she cared about was detecting even the smallest sign of life in the still, drawn features. Worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, Rose fumbled the stethoscope ends into her ears and then searched about over the T-shirt to first the left and then the right of the thin chest.

She let out a groan of pure frustration. It wasn't fair. Not that long ago she was fairly sure she had somehow managed to control such energies as to make her the most important person in the universe. Now, though, she had never felt so helpless. She'd tried everything from pleading to some mild slappage and the Doctor still wouldn't wake up. In fact he seemed to be getting worse.

Her moment of anguished introspection was rather unceremoniously broken by a loud, undignified gurgle from the vicinity of her belly. She mumbled an embarrassed "Pardon" to the empty room and then broke into a rueful grin as her eyes landed on the empty chocolate mousse carton that had been all she'd had to eat in… oooh, at least a couple of centuries.

"Okay", she muttered, tucking the blanket in a bit tighter round the still form before straightening purposefully. "You stay right there" she muttered with a heavy touch of irony. "I'll be back in a jiffy. And then…" she went still for a minute, closing her eyes for a second before opening them and glaring meaningfully at the crystal column in the centre of the room. "Then we'll think of something."

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House leaned back nonchalantly against the corridor wall as he listened to the argument taking place in the store room behind him. There was a rather interesting interplay of threats and bribery taking place between a rather cute nurse and a hospital porter over who was going to be the one to report a missing stack of bed linen to the ward sister.

A small smirk played across his features as he noted the name Glenda and information about a certain incident in oncology a few years back for future blackmail purposes. The smile was wiped away though as a familiar voice, raised in annoyance, sounded from beyond the double doors of the department section.

"He pulled what out… well, surely that's … oh, I see." House edged closer to the swinging barriers, edging them apart with the tip of his cane to glimpse the statuesque form of the chief of medicine bent over the reception desk in a way that had her tight skirt straining in interesting ways. A phone receiver was stretched out from the other side and clamped in a worryingly white knuckled grip to her ear.

"Oh no, don't let her leave" she ground out in a voice of iron control. "Tell her that this will be sorted out without the need for yet another formal complaint. She will be receiving that apology, even if I have to…"

House took a step back, letting the door swing to gently, before surveying his escape options. Aha! Sometimes he wondered if Wilson had a point about him leading a charmed life. He crept across the corridor and pushed open the door to a private patient room, glancing at his watch as he did so. Perfect timing. Unless someone had corrected the rather stupid housekeeping oversight, he could partake of Coma-guy's lunch whilst catching up on the afternoon showing of General Hospital.

House was halfway across the room and reaching for the remote when he froze at the sound of a muffled sniff from the en suite bathroom. A slow smirk stretched his stubbled cheeks. Ah, soap opera drama of a different sort! He tiptoed with exaggerated caution to once more press himself against a cracked open doorway. From this position he was able to make out a mumbled one sided conversation in a thick London brogue.

"I'm not sure where I am Mum, somewhere in America I think. ... No I can't come on home, it's not like I can just jump on a bus ... No, I can't drive it anymore, he made me forget ... No, it wasn't like that, he was saving my life. I think that the knowledge was about to make my head explode or something."

House peered in through the open door to look down on the dark roots of a bleach blonde head. A young girl was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the small cubicle, a mobile phone pressed to her ear.

"Oh Mum, shut up for a sec, I'm fine, but he's not. Mum.." there was a pause and another choked sniffle "I think he's dying and I don't know what to do."

House quirked an eyebrow. Curiouser and curiouser. Maybe he could miss General Hospital this once.

"Everything's so different, I'm in a hospital for God's sake and I still can't figure out ... No, I can't do that .... I just can't, okay?" The girl raked her free hand though her matted blonde tresses. "Look, I don't have time to talk right now, I just wanted to let you know I was okay... No, I have no idea, I didn't even know it was Christmas. ... Sure! " she bit out with rather forced sarcasm "I'd love to be there for lunch tomorrow. Let me just take a quick crash course in medicine, fix a guy who would blow the minds of the best doctors on this planet and work out a way of getting us both halfway around the planet. Oh, and I haven't got you anything yet." She let out a rather wobbly chuckle. "Well at least this time I have a good excuse, I was kinda busy saving the universe." At this point, House's eyebrows climbed into his hairline. He quietly turned and settled himself comfortably on the edge of Coma-guy's bed, his cane stretched out beside him as he faced the door to the bathroom and waited for the sniffled goodbyes to be completed.

He made a few slight adjustments to the nonchalance of his slouch as he listened to the beep of a mobile phone and the deep steadying breaths from the other side of the door. He had his smirk firmly fixed in place when a girl of about twenty years old pushed the door open and rocked to a halt as dark brown eyes widened on him in shock. He let the silence stretch out for a couple of seconds as she gaped for something to say. He could see her starting to edge towards the door, a no doubt entertaining excuse for her presence there forming between rather luscious lips. He interrupted before she could get out the first syllables.

"So Alice..." he drawled, fixing her in place with a twinkling sapphire gaze "when exactly did you first step down the rabbit hole?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Authors note:**

"Emergency! This story is in critical condition. It's haemorrhaging readers fast. Updates are slowing and decreasing in length. Author energy and enthusiasm is waning"

"Oh dear Doctor. This is serious. What's causing this condition?"

"It's a tragic case of near fatal over extension. The irresponsible author has put completing her second degree, not getting fired and getting all her students through their exams ahead of the health of her fantasy life."

"Is there any hope at all?"

"Well the next couple of weeks will be critical, but there is hope. Half term is coming up."

"So what's the prognosis?"

"I'll administer a massive dose of caffeine and prescribe a steady IV drip of reviews, that should help. Dammit I'm not going to loose another one! I'll keep this story alive even if I have to kill the author to do it!"

*Cue dramatic theme music*

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**Chapter 3 **

**Irresistible Force would like to meet … **

Rose froze, her mind a disjointed jumble that was still mostly making the long trek back from the comfort of that little flat in Islington.

The silence stretched for an uncomfortably long moment. The tall scruffy man in front of her didn't seem inclined to break it, just shifted his weight on the bed a little and continued to pin her with a cold, blue gaze. A small smirk creased the heavy stubble of his cheeks.

Rose scrambled to pull her thoughts in order, desperately trying to recall if she'd said anything too incriminating about time travel or aliens that could have been overheard. The memories wouldn't clear, she'd been too upset.

Sod it, she thought suddenly, trying to push all the fear and uncertainty to the back of her mind. She wiped a sleeve over her face, trying to wipe away the tear tracks whilst straightening her spine, trying to match the level of intensity in the stranger's eyes with a glare of defiance.

She decided to ignore his question. When unsure, always better to go on the defensive. Her mum had taught her that.

"D'you know you're sitting on the poor guy's foot?" she snapped at him. "Can't be very comfy"

One eyebrow rose mockingly in that slightly gaunt face. "Thanks for your concern" he drawled "but I have very taught buttocks, they can take the punishment."

Rose's scowl deepened. She really wasn't in the mood for adolescent humour.

"I meant the patient, you idiot." She paused, a thought suddenly occurring to her and she tried to continue in an even tone. "He's my dad, I just popped in for a visit, but he's really sick and he needs his rest and you should get out of here before you wake him up and get in trouble." Rose felt a hot flood of blood blossom in her cheeks and tried not to wince. She knew that the lies had poured out too quickly and had sounded false and unconvincing. The guy hadn't moved, except for the other corner of his mouth twitching up to join the first in that irritating smirk.

"Nice try" he finally commented mildly, those blue eyes flicking over to the still features of the stocky, middle aged figure swathed beneath the bedclothes and his spider web of connecting pipes and wires, before fixing on Rose again. "But that guy's been in a stage 3 coma for the past 10 years and only has one living relative, a son" Rose shifted uncomfortably as those eyes travelled a slow tour of her body and the smirk turned a little lascivious. "And unless your doctor's _extraordinarily_ good, you are not him." He rested his chin in one hand, in an infinitely patient gesture, and quirked an eyebrow at her. "Sooo…" he drawled his voice laced with amusement at her discomfort "Care to try again at what you're doing here?"

Rose glared back at him, reassessing her initial impressions. She'd had a half-formed notion that he was a bored patient, probably influenced by the rather chavvy flame painted cane he had resting between his knees. Just her luck that she seemed to have attracted the attention of someone with some authority.

"You a Doctor here or something?" she muttered in a hostile tone.

"Only when I can't avoid it" the man replied evenly then continued implacably "and you are trying very hard to avoid the subject in hand. Namely, how you '_saved the universe'_" sarcasm dripped from the words _"_and how exactly this has led to a friend of yours possibly breathing his last somewhere that is not here."

Rose blinked, trying to keep her growing panic from showing in her face. She decided that a new approach might be called for and forced her taught cheek muscles into a flirtatious smile, fluttering a coy look at him through long dark lashes. "Oh you shouldn't listen to that" she murmured breathily, going so far as to force out a girlish giggle. "Oh God, I can be _such_ a drama queen! My friend and I did have a bit of an accident earlier and I helped out and brought him here. He's downstairs now." She started fumbling behind her back for the door handle. "In fact I'd better go and see if he's okay"

She jumped and flinched backwards as the guy opposite her rocked suddenly to his feet and lurched towards her, even letting out a little yelp as the cane shot past her ear to thump loudly on the door behind her, slamming shut the slivered glimpse of escape. She stared at him in alarm but, despite the violence of his actions, his voice didn't waver from that calm, almost disinterested tone.

"I don't think so. First of all I don't think you were exaggerating. Histrionic personality types are incapable of recognising their overemotional responses to difficult situations rationally, whilst a crisis is ongoing. Also, I happen to know, from deeply unpleasant experience, that there have been no male accident victims admitted into the hospital by an attractive female companion within the last six hours." He lowered the cane but moved further forward to interpose his body between her and the door. "So, I say again. Where is this friend whose condition had you sobbing to your Mum just a few moments ago?"

Rose stared up at him. He towered a good half foot above her and it was hard to stand her ground and suppress her feelings of intimidation. She tried the vapid smile again. "Well, you see, he has this terrible fear of doctors. He refused to come in. He's resting at a hotel near here, but I'm sure he'll be okay." She gave him her very best little girl lost look. "If it was anything serious don't you think I'd have called an ambulance, no matter what he said?"

That prompted an altogether too thoughtful a gaze for her liking. "That's precisely what intrigues me" he drawled. "Despite the very convincing dumb blonde act, you've shown that you can come up with a half-way plausible story when put on the spot so there are obviously some brains beneath that bad peroxide job." Rose felt a momentary stab of indignation pierce her panic at that, but he carried on before she could protest. "However, from the random collection of textbooks and medical journals you've been filching all day it's obvious that you have absolutely no idea what's wrong with your friend and you don't have the first clue as to what to do about it." He paused a second, head slightly tilted to one side as he continued to stare at her. "So the question becomes, why would you risk a charge of negligent manslaughter for standing by whilst a man dies when you were within spitting distance of one of the finest medical minds in the country?"

Rose went very still for a moment. Recognition, and a tiny spark of hope, blossomed into being inside of her. "You're Doctor House, aren't you?" she stated, more than asked, eyeing him up and down with a thoughtful expression.

Both his eyebrows raised at that. "Now I know we haven't met before" he said in bemusement, then paused, frowning. "Unless it was that time in Reno last month, I seemed to recall a blonde who.."

Rose cut him short with a glare. "I've been wandering round this hospital all day, hearing things. And here's me thinking they were exaggerating about the ego and irritating habits."

House took the insults in stride and merely asked encouragingly "And what else did you hear about me?"

There was a long pause before Rose sighed, giving in to the inevitable with not a little relief at the prospect of potentially finding someone else to shoulder the burden of her current predicament. "They say that you're good. That you can fix anyone of anything." She confirmed, resignedly. She met his eyes in bold provocation. "They also say that you don't mind bending a few rules to get things done."

Despite herself, Rose felt a small grin creep over her face at the sparkle of interest that visibly ignited in the blue-grey eyes above her. The grin died suddenly as she was abruptly reminded with unbearable force of the same gleam that used to flash in very similar eyes at the first hint of a challenge.

She felt House's gaze on her as she pulled herself together and thought hard about how to make use of her sudden opportunity. "Right." She announced, straightening her spine and fixing him with an unbending glare. "You like unusual patients, right?" She saw House cock his head and open his mouth but she didn't wait for him to respond before ploughing on in determination. "Well, I can guarantee you the weirdest, most unusual patient you'll ever hope to meet. Problem is, you can't tell anyone about him. You got to promise that you'll keep him a secret and hide him from anyone in authority, or I'm not bringing him in."

There was a long pause whilst House eyed up her determined expression and the firm set of her lips, an effect only slightly spoiled by a visible gulp as she tried to swallow down an obvious attack of nerves. Rose felt the release of tension in the room as an almost palpable force when a cheeky grin suddenly split his face, making him seem a lot less ominous and kind of cute, in an incredibly old kind of way.

He transferred his cane to his left hand and stuck out the other one in front of her saying "Now that sounds like my sort of deal"

Rose grinned in relief, grasping the outstretched hand and giving it a decisive pump. "Let's start over shall we?" she asked, with more good humour than she had felt in what felt like forever. "I'm Rose Tyler". Again, her grin was washed away as the man opposite her gave her an arrogant smirk that she found all too familiar.

"And I'm the man that's about to save your bacon." He announced, then challenged "So, where's my new patient?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Authors note: **Never trust a General Hospital doctor to treat a case of nervous exhaustion. Sure they all have wonderfully chiseled jaws and look great in profile when striking a dramatic pose but they don't know their caffeine from their Doxylamine. Seems like I've been the one in a coma for three months! My sincere apologies. I haven't forgotten my vow to finish my stories, and I have to thank all those who have said such kind things to me to make me believe it's worth the effort. I'll try bludgeoning my poor brain back into working order now.

**Disclaimer**: As in chapter one. I'm not allowed to keep these characters, I have to put them back after playing with them (only slightly used).

**Chapter Five**

**Admission?**

House watched in interest as the small grin crystallised on Rose's face. Her stance had just begun to loosen up from her previous defensive crouch, but he now saw the trapezius muscles of her neck and shoulders pull painfully taught again as some new concern crashed across her mind. Her eyes flicked downwards for a moment. One hand crept slowly into a tight jeans pocket, then emerged trailing a thin chain. He saw a glimpse of an old brass Yale key before it was enveloped in a white-knuckled, clenched grip.

"Is there a problem?" He tried to keep his voice mild, an attempt to calm a prey on the verge of flight. Her eyes flicked back to his, seeming to come back to the present from a million miles away, with a jolt. She hesitated, as if weighing her words.

"Noooo, course not. We've got a deal right?" she drew out her answer with a forced brightness that didn't quite mask that perplexing air of near hysterical panic that had hooked his interest from the first moment he'd spotted her, stealing a text book from a nurse's station that morning. She gave him a brittle smile and carried on in a friendly, conspiratorial tone.

"How about you sort us out a nice quiet room where we won't be found, I'll sneak my friend in the back door and meet you back here for the introductions, okay?"

House narrowed his eyes at her, considering. His first thought was to agree, the lure of smuggling a case under Cuddy's nose for no reason other than the request of a pretty girl had a perverse attraction. Since Cuddy was always having a go at him to increase his work load, taking on an unauthorised case would also have the appeal of novelty, and it would never do to start becoming predictable to dear Cuddles. Still, some instinct caused him to hesitate, something in the keenness of Rose's body language to separate from him. Like everyone else in this world, she was hiding something.

He shot her his best shark's grin. "Oh, no, I wouldn't dream of leaving you on your own when you're so upset." He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, feeling the tendons spasming under the steel grip of his fingers. "We'll go together shall we? Where is he?" He felt his grin turn wolfish at the panicked catch to her breathing. She took a quick step backwards, breaking free of the mock consoling grip with a shudder. Again the image of a frightened doe, poised to bolt flashed across his mind and he was startled when, instead of trying to argue with him, she seemed to reach some decision, straighten her shoulders and step forward to open the door with a flourish.

"After you, Doctor!" she invited, the phrase seeming to cause her a degree of ironic amusement.

He quirked an eyebrow at her before moving forward through the doorway, catching a whiff of a light floral perfume and something strangely metallic, overlaid by the funk-sweat of panic as he brushed past her. "What's so funny?"

She flashed a grin at him. "Oh, it's just that in some ways you kind of remind me of the man we're going to see. He's a doctor too by the way."

House filed this information with interest; of potential relevance to the resistance to seek medical help? He started towards the lifts, trying to force his weak leg to match her pace. "Really?" he drawled "Surely two such tall and debonair medical professionals are more than the universe can stand without imploding". He felt her glance up at him, pausing for some internal assessment.

"He's not as tall as you" she murmured, then adding as a sad afterthought "at least, not anymore". House blinked at that, pausing in surprise as Rose carried on in a bright tone. "And there's another big difference, of course. I know it's not too PC to point out but you're not really the fastest bloke on this planet, what with that dodgy leg an' all. Whereas the Doctor? " she flashed him a dazzling smile "He likes to RRRUN!" She drawled the word out with over-dramatic emphasis and, before he caught on to her mercurial change of mood, had twisted away from him and sprinted off down the corridor, pausing at the door to the stairwell to shout back to him in cheerful defiance.

"Ten minutes! Back door. And remember, it's a secret. Deal?!". With a flash of blond hair she was out of sight. House growled under his breath, lengthening his stride towards the lift as fast as his spasming leg muscle would allow. He could catch her up in the lobby. Maybe even tail her without her spotting, if he could just...

"House!" His teeth clacked together in frustration as the familiar voice barked out in amused malevolence behind him. He jabbed in futile hope at the lift call button with his cane as he heard the click of high heels stalk towards his tensed back, before shivering in resignation as warm breath tickled the back of his neck. "I want a word with you!"

* * *

Rose let out a breath of relief as the footsteps echoed away in the opposite direction to her concrete corner of the dim parking lot. She straightened from where she'd been crouched between two closely parked cars and grinned in satisfaction at her latest filch. She yanked the folded wheelchair free of the dark cars with an expensive sounding screech. A hurried guilty glance, five minutes of wrestling, a skinned knuckle and a lot of swearing later and she was pushing the fully constructed wheelchair through the narrow doorway of the tardis.

"Hey honey, I'm home!" she called in grim humour, her gaze resting for a long moment on the still cocooned form that lay in the exact same position as when she'd left. Too still. She held her breath, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she fixed her eyes on the mottled light that bathed the blanket swaddled body. The frozen moment at the centre of the time machine seemed to stretch forever. Rose could have sworn that even her heart paused in it's beating ... waiting .. then jerked back into rhythm as a ragged gasp rose over the background hum.

She stood frozen for another long moment, and then stumbled forwards with a hesitant yet hopeful call. "Doctor... are you awake?" She crouched down, peering into the unfamiliar face. She reached a hand out, tentatively, to brush away some strands of unruly hair that lay thickly plastered to the pale forehead. She withdrew it with a hiss, as if his skin had carried an electric shock. "Damn! You're burning up!" she muttered "Doctor, please, you gotta tell me, is this normal?!" She lent back on her heels with a sigh. "You know, if you don't wake up and tell me what to do I'm just going to carry on making it up as I go along." She pressed a hand to her lips, breathing deeply till she felt the tremors subside before adding quietly "and I'm gonna keep getting it wrong." She gave a weak grin as she slumped back onto her ass next to him. "I'm already going against the last thing you told me, as usual. I talked to a doctor." She paused, half hoping for a cry of indignation. After a moment of silence she carried on feeling as defensive as if he actually had chewed her out. "Well, what am I supposed to do? Just sit here and watch you die?!"

She stared over at the wheelchair for a moment then snorted in sudden determination. "Sod it!" she declared to the empty room. "This is going to work. I'll damn well make it work." She rolled to her feet, turning to drag the wheelchair closer, thereby missing the cloud of golden vapour that curled out from the pale lips to disperse amongst the coral glow of the mottled walls.

It took all of Rose's strength to level the wiry body into the chair. God, the guy seemed to be all elbows! Her bruises were going to have bruises tomorrow. She dragged the wheelchair backwards, pausing in the doorway to glance up at the pale green glow of the central column. "I hope you know what you're doing" she muttered, accusingly, feeling better for shifting a little of the blame. She blinked in surprise at a slight change in pitch of the almost subliminal whine. She could have sworn that the frequency of the pulsing lights increased ever so slightly, too. She put out a hand to stroke the orange honeycomb of the wall beside the doorway. The surface felt firm but slightly yielding, and disturbingly warm, beneath her fingertips. "He'll be okay" she murmured "he's got to be!" She paused, waiting for a response, then cleared her throat, embarrassed to find herself talking to an empty room. "That's a bad sign, Rose!" she muttered, "as is talking to yourself". She slammed the door shut behind them angrily, then started on a weaving and uncoordinated journey across the car park, cursing a recalcitrant wheel that seemed to have its own ideas about the route to take.

The awkward, halting journey was punctuated with a quiet muttered string of language that would have gotten Rose a slap from her mother. The cursing doubled in both volume and pungency as she emerged from the shelter of the car park into a cold drizzle that instantly seemed to penetrate the thin fabric of her pink hooded sweatshirt.

She blinked through the haze of raindrops, sighing in relief as she picked out the halo of a light above a doorway. As she got closer she made out a familiar figure slouched over the support of a cane. She hurried forward, keen to get out of the penetrating dampness, then froze as the door swung open to disgorge a further three figures. Her gaze flickered over a slim brunette woman; a tall, muscled black guy and a shorter, well groomed blond bloke before settling on the stubbled features of the second doctor she had started to think she could trust.

He met her betrayed glare without flinching and even had the nerve to give her a smug smirk and a little wave of his free hand.

"Hi!" he greeted her cheerfully. "Hope you don't mind, I thought I'd invite a few friends to the party!"


	6. Chapter 6

**Authors note: **See how hard I'm trying? Less than two days between posts is a big improvement on two years! Plus I'm also taking time out to do a bit of medical research. I'd have loved to have been a doctor but sadly my brain would have melted and you don't often see House's team sneaking quick peaks at Wikipedia! If there are any medical doctors out there please feel free to correct me whenever I'd be about to kill someone!

**Disclaimer**: As in chapter one, in case it still needs saying!

**Chapter Six**

**Double take**

Chase felt the first stirrings of interest pervade the general sense of irritation at being dragged out into the cold wet night on yet another magical mystery tour. He was a little disgusted with his priorities that the majority of that interest seemed to stem from the intriguing bundled figure being smuggled in through the rear entrance, rather than the rather shapely blonde hovering over him and glaring at House like an enraged mother tigress.

He could feel Cameron beside him start to take a step forward, instinctively reaching for that initial assessment. He put a hand on her shoulder, halting that forward motion and pretended not to notice the glare she shot him before she settled back into poised tension beside him. Not that the guy didn't look like he needed an urgent differential. Honestly, the face framed by the porcupine haircut and Elvis sideburns was so pale that he half expected the guy to lurch for the blonde and sink his fangs into her jugular. Still, they had all done this dance enough times to know it was much simpler to just let House lead.

He fixed his eyes on his boss, noting that intent gleam in the ice blue eyes as they ranged over the odd pair. He glanced back at the guy in the wheelchair, at the hospital grey blanket tucked around the scrawny body of an unconscious man in his mid thirties with shallow breathing, mild cyanosis and signs of a high fever. He looked back at House, seeing that fixed look of concentration that was the reason he put up with all his bullshit. It was obvious that House was seeing something he wasn't. Sometimes he felt like they were all working with blindfolds on whilst House revelled in his perfect vision, but hell, it was better to be blind but feel the sun on your face than stay indoors, right?

He saw House take a cane-assisted step forward, eyes still assessing the patient, then pause as the wheelchair was yanked a few paces back. House finally looked back up at the girl, who took a deep breath, acknowledging that the glare wasn't doing the job of burning House to a bitter crisp like it had obviously been intended to do.

"You promised" she hissed, some heightened emotion causing the blood to collect in hectic spots of colour high on each cheekbone. "You swore you'd keep this a secret."

House waved a hand in an all too familiar dismissive gesture. "Oh don't get your cute little red thong in a twist." Almost without conscious volition Chase felt his eyes dragged down to survey the tightly stretched denim over the curve of her hips, searching for a flash of scarlet. He blinked and determinedly fixed his gaze at a neutral point above the girl's right ear as House continued to snap in that same impatient tone. "I promised I would keep your boy-toy a secret from anyone in authority, remember. Well, newsflash, these guys have less authority than the night janitor. As least he can decide to clean a blocked toilet when he comes across one. These guys can't do anything without my say so, trust me on this."

Chase noted with a spark of amusement the sound of grinding teeth from Foreman beside him, but was too busy trying to analyse the blink of startled embarrassment that had crossed the girl's face at the sex reference to feel much chagrin himself. He wondered whether House had spotted that.

The air, already supercharged with tension, practically solidified as House continued in an implacable tone. "What's more, and I hate to break this to one of your tender years, but everybody lies. Yes, I swore to keep your nasty little secret, even without knowing what it is, because it amused me to do so. But know this." Chase could have sworn the air between the two would start to sizzle any second as they locked gazes. "The moment I decide it has become medically necessary to involve the outside world in the treatment of your boyfriend, I'll be shouting his existence from the rooftop. No matter what you two have done, I doubt getting found out would really be the end of the world."

Now that was an interesting flinch, Chase noted. He found himself holding his breath as the blonde turned her head for a quick glance behind her at the direction she'd come from, possibly the parking garage. The silence stretched for a second longer than Chase was expecting and he wondered just what the hell House had gotten them all involved in this time. House, too, shifted in impatience.

"Come on" he snapped, "you've obviously already made your decision or you wouldn't be here. Take the plunge and worry about the consequences later, or do you want to add a case of pneumonia to his other problems?"

The girl slumped a little and she even let out a derisory snort. "Guess you're right!" she murmured, and Chase caught an unusual twang to her voice that he couldn't immediately place. "Jumping in without looking does seem to be a speciality of mine" she continued quietly, with more bitter amusement than Chase would have expected from a girl her age. "That and making things worse", her gaze lingered for a moment on the still face beneath her, then she seemed to pull herself back to the here and now to looked pointedly at House.

"So Doctor" she challenged with a wry smile. "You'd better lead the way... again".

House bared his teeth in a predatory grin. "Oh no, little girl. I think this time you'd better go first" his eyes drifted downwards, as she started to squeeze the wheelchair past them to manoeuvre it through the doorway into the building. Chase fell in behind House and just managed to catch the murmured "The view's better, anyway" before the girl, in all innocence, ran over both their feet with the heavy wheel.

* * *

Rose couldn't help feeling a little like the pied piper of the disabled as she crept along the corridor pushing the clumsy wheelchair and leading the two limping men and their sniggering colleagues. She reached an intersection in the corridors and glanced back over her shoulder at House, to see him pointing the way with the flame striped end of his cane. The fairytale feeling increased in strength as she turned the corner and immediately felt like she'd grown three foot. She peered forward to where the suddenly luminescent striped corridor walls opened out into a large space lined with rows of tiny brightly coloured chairs, half expecting to see a troupe of seven dwarves appear and start singing a ditty.

Rose glanced back over her shoulder at her procession and saw the pretty brunette lean over to whisper to House in nervous irritation. "Can you please explain why we're sneaking these two into Paediatrics?"

House seemed to ignore her, lurching over to the other side of the day-glow corridor to crack open a door and peer cautiously inside. He turned back to them, pushing the door open behind him and waving them inside with an impatient motion of his cane. Rose felt him glare at her when she hesitated for a moment. "Well, come on!" he hissed, "he's not going to get any younger out here!"

Rose ducked her head to hide a smile as she pushed the Doctor into the kids' room House had indicated, looking down at the pale face below her, at least six or seven years younger than how it used to look, even with the aging affect of the dark circles shadowing the pits of his eyes.

The brunette brushed past her, although Rose noticed that she carefully and quietly shut the door behind their group before rounding on House with growing impatience. "House, are you going to give me an answer? Why..."

"Because A) this is the last place that Cuddy will look for me and I have had my fill of patients filled with Christmas cheer; B) it's the holiday season, time to grasp your dear little loved ones to the bosom of the family. The flood of little broken bones shouldn't be coming in till at least Boxing day; and C)" Rose watched, feeling rather smothered by the unaccustomed wave of cynicism, as House paused to start rifling through the mini chest of drawers to one side of the bright blue bed. It was the dark skinned guy with the number one haircut who finally urged in an almost uninterested tone.

"And C)?"

House seemed to ignore him for a moment, turning to a pair of curtains decorated with what; quite frankly; Rose considered to be a rather terrifying array of psychotically grinning clowns. House scrutinised them for a few seconds before turning towards them with a sneer. "C? Laughter helps you heal. Haven't you seen Patch Adams?"

He threw the curtains apart with a flourish and started writing on the glass of the window in thick red wax crayon. Rose tied to keep her breathing regular as the words BIG SECRET GUY were formed in messy capitals at the top of the window pane.

House spun around fixing his team in place with a cocked eyebrow. "Come on, I'm waiting for a differential here. I'll take suggestions either for what's killing him or what big secret these folks are hiding."

Rose found herself holding her breath whilst the woman standing across the room spluttered in indignation. "You expect us to start guessing what's wrong with an anonymous man we just saw five minutes ago with no examination, records or any medical history?" she blurted, throwing a hand up in a dramatic gesture of frustration.

House settled his buttocks back against the lip of the windowsill, crossing the ankle of his weak leg over the prop of his good one. "So? Get them." He stated with exaggerated patience. "The guy's right there, as is his partner in crime, who I know for a fact is amusingly bad at lying. She may not give you a full history but it should be fun watching her squirm".

As if his words had cut some sort of string holding them back, the three doctors swarmed forwards towards her. Rose had to resist the impulse to fling her body over the Doctor's, blocking their access but instead let the woman draw her gently to one side. She stood with tightly clenched fists as the men unwrapped the blanket and eased the Doctor's black leather jacket from his long arms. Between them they lifted his limp body, sagging like the discarded skin suit of a Slitheen, onto the three quarter length bed. Rose searched desperately for some sort of reaction from the Doctor's slack features as the men worked to remove the black leather brogues from feet that dangled foolishly off the end of the bed. He didn't even stir, the paleness of his skin seeming more pronounced against the white starched linen of the pillow.

She was vaguely aware of the woman murmuring to her in a soft, encouraging voice that she needed to answer a few questions, but Rose's whole attention was fixed on the stethoscope the blonde guy had just pulled from the pocket of his white lab coat. She watched, hardly daring to breath, as the tips were fitted into his ears and the end slid down beneath the neck of the baggy black T-Shirt of the man who had knocked her world askew and now had left her tumbling in freefall.

Rose felt numb, dimly aware of the quiet insistence of the nagging voice beside her and the penetrating crystal gaze of the man at the window, but her whole being was focused on the examination taking place in front of her. She was painfully aware of her own heartbeat, pounding so hard that it seemed like it wanted to burst out of her chest and drown out the questions she didn't want asked.

She took a deep breath as the first glimmer of puzzlement flashed across the boyish features of the man over the bed as he listened.

"Problem Chase?" Despite her internal preparations Rose still felt herself jump as House's voice cracked out across the room.

She watched as Chase furrowed his brow even further, cocking his head to one side as if trying to distinguish a half heard sound. Pale blue eyes looked up, unfocused as he continued to listen. His answer was slow and hesitant.

"I'm not sure." He admitted, sounding distracted rather than embarrassed at his own confusion. He gaze sharpened as he looked over at House. "You better come listen to this." He called, extracting the stethoscope from around his neck and holding it out towards House. "I've never heard anything quite like it."


	7. Chapter 7

**Authors note: **And thick and fast it came at last…! Don't get too excited though, I'm back at work now, and I'd better spend less time writing then or I'll get fired! I hope those of you who were expecting the big reveal will forgive me for a while longer, I'm more of a slow striptease sort of a gal. I hope it'll be better for the anticipation. Many thanks to Taranea for her info on Gallifreyan physiology. That will become increasingly useful!

**Disclaimer**: As in chapter one, still applies!

**Chapter Seven**

**Broken heart**

Foreman snorted at the perplexed expression that creased the normal cocky grin of Chase's smooth features.

"Nice specifics, Chase!" he mocked "Are we talking cardiac echoe, arrhythmia, atrial tachycardia, what?" Chase shook off his daze to snap a glare across the bed at him.

"Yeah, right!" the young doctor drawled back at him, annoyance making the twang of his Australian accent more pronounced. "Like I've not diagnosed each of those a hundred times apiece. I told you, this is different to _anything_ I've heard before." He drew the words out slowly and carefully, as if talking to the mentally challenged. "It sounded..." he paused, groping for words "well, it was weird." He finished with an unsatisfied shrug.

Foreman grinned at his colleague, snatching the stethoscope out of Chase's outstretched hand. "Oh very scientific." He intoned with heavy sarcasm. "How about we try for a little more professionalism here." He snapped the slightly warm ends of the stethoscope into his ears, wishing he'd thought to grab his own when House had come to round them all up from the office, and leaned over the rasping chest of their unconscious patient. He slipped the chest piece into position and listened to the slow thrum for a few seconds before looking up in puzzlement at Chase's expectant face.

"I don't know what you're going on about." Foreman exclaimed, straightening up and cocking his head as his stunned colleague. "He's certainly a little bradychardic, heart rate maybe as low as 50 bpm, but nothing I'd describe as 'weird'".

He was making little quote marks in the air around the last word when the young blonde girl shook free of her frozen observations and came hurtling across the room towards him. He yelped in surprise, and not a small amount of pain, as she yanked on the tubing of the stethoscope, pulling until the binaural piece tore out of his ears with an audible pop.

"Let me hear that" she muttered with a rather worryingly hysterical tinge to her words. She pressed the disk into position then went still, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.

Foreman looked up at Cameron and made a desperate querying gesture with one hand whilst the other massaged his aching ear. She responded with a helpless shrug and they both watched as the girl flicked a nervous glance around the room before hesitantly reaching up to place her palm almost reverently on the left side of the man's chest, in a curious sort of caress.

She slumped forward over the patient's unconscious body, her hair forming a curtain that shielded her face from view. The soft sob sounded loud in the stillness of the room and her voice whispered flat and broken from the shadowed space.

"Oh God, his heart's..." she paused then went on "He's worse. This is... bad. Very bad."

"Interesting!"

The softly heaving shoulders froze as House's dry, impassive voice washed over her. The curtain of hair parted as a fierce frown shot out across the room. Foreman blinked at the sudden anger radiating from the small girl as she growled out "I'm glad you find my friend's dying so fascinating."

House merely lifted one eyebrow before correcting her calmly "What's interesting is your reaction. From the way you're using that stethoscope, it's clear that you know even less about medicine than Chase here, yet despite Foreman's fairly mild and boring prognosis you're still convinced he's poised on the brink of the abyss."

Foreman smothered a grin as the girl's furious glare was joined by a glower of disapproving empathy from Cameron and a low growl from Chase, who took advantage of the pause to snatch his stethoscope back with a bad tempered gesture.

Oblivious to the tension in the room, House straightened up from his slouch. Turning back to the window with his crayon hovering below the irreverant title he paused to look back at Foreman. "What's his temp?"

Foreman placed a large palm on the clammy forhead beneath him, feeling his grin melt away at the slick heat. Genuine concern lent his voice an edge as he shot House a significant look. "The guy's burning up. Are we really going to do the cloak and dagger thing?"

House didn't reply, and Foreman had to grit his teeth at the pleased smile flickering over his boss's stubbled cheeks as he scrwaled the word 'fever' on the window. House paused, glancing briefly at Chase before adding ''weird' cardiac output' in capitals beneath it. Foreman scowled at Chase's smirk. "I told you, I didn't hear.."

"Don't stifle the little one's creativity. Besides, with a forehead you could fry eggs on, a slow heart rate can be counted as pretty weird." Foreman snapped his mouth shut at that, whilst House transferred his attention to Cameron. "You're up next. What can you add?" he challenged her.

The scowl Cameron had been wearing for the past five minutes intensified. "Well a name would help. Honestly, House, this is ridiculous! We know nothing about this patient and what we don't know could kill him. Who is he and why hasn't he been admitted?"

"Don't ask me, ask the lovely Rose here, the girl with the heightened sense of melodrama." House shooed Cameron away dismissivley then lent back against the windowsill again to observe.

Cameron turned to the blonde with a gentle smile, talking in soothing tones as she leant her head closer in a conspiratorial gesture. "Rose, can you tell me his name?" Foreman had to bite down on his impatience as even this simple question was met with a pause and hesitant frown.

"His name's John Smith" Rose finally imparted. Foreman couldn't help but agree with Chase's disbelieving snort.

"Fantastic. Yeah, she's going to be a great help! We can't even get a real name out of her" groaned the Australian doctor. Rose frowned, her face clouding over in preparation for battle but support came from an unexpected source.

"Give her a break Chase! It's not easy protecting your alien boyfriend from being seized by the powers that be".

There was a moment of confused blinking around the room but House kept his gaze locked on Rose's face, which had gone almost as pale as the man on the bed's. He continued the piercing scrutiny whilst continuing. "Although illegally immigrating from Britain of all places has the virtue of novelty, I'll give you that. I've heard dark things about your National Health Service but surely traveling three and a half thousand miles to escape it is a little extreme."

Rose's mouth liteally dropped open and she gaped for a breath like a landed fish. "You think I smuggled him in?" she paused "Well, obviously I smuggled him in _here_ but…" She paused again as a sudden smile lit up her face. "Oooh!" she let out in delight, whisking around to grab the discarded leather jacket from its crumpled heap on the wheelchair and clasping it to her chest. "I know what could sort this out" she muttered, delving half her arm into a deceptively deep pocket. Her face flickered through a series of emotions from disgust to alarm as she rooted around before settling into a triumphant beam as she withdrew a slim black leather wallet.

She paused for a moment of distrust, looking at House, then whirled around to toss it at Chase, who started and fumbled it into a one-handed catch against his chest. He flicked it open, scanning the contents, before looking up with a shrug. "Seems official. Passport of a Mr John Smith of England, arrived in the US two days ago."

"I thought you said he was a Doctor" House snapped, causing Rose to jump slightly.

"He is." She muttered defensively. "He's the best there is."

Chase broke into the arguement with a helpful tone. "He could be a consultant surgeon. They're called mister in England. I think it's some sort of ancient guff about being exempt from the hippocratic oath when they need to cut into a patient to cure them."

House grinned "What an enlightened view! But that would beg the question why a respected professional would be on the run in someone else's clothes."

Rose's face spasmed in a strange mix of grief and bitterness. "They're _his_ clothes" she muttered with oddly intense emphasis, and she clutched the jacket tighter to her chest as if for reassurance.

House snorted. "Nope. The baggy clothes and belt an inch too loose could, just possibly, be explained by losing a lot of body mass in a short period of time, but no matter how ill you are your feet don't shrink two whole shoe sizes". He reached out with the end of his cane, hooked it into one of the discarded shoes and, with an expert flick, tossed it into the air straight at Foreman's head.

Foreman started and managed to grab the missile before it collided with his nose. Taking a calming breath he held it along side the garish red and pink striped sock of one of the feet dangling from the end of the bed.

"He's right." He confirmed resignedly. He looked up at Rose, waiting for an explanation but her face remained set in sullen defiance. Foreman sighed. "This is getting us nowhere" he complained then continued with teeth-gritted patience. "What can you tell us about our patient?" More silence. "For example, how old is he."

That caused a moment's hesitation and Rose chewed on her bottom lip for a couple of seconds before answering with exaggerated care. "I don't know exactly." She shrugged "I've only known him for about a year."

Foreman took another deep breath, trying to retain his calm tone as he persisted. "Well he looks around thirty six. Does that seem about right?"

Despite practically twanging with tension, Foreman was interested to note the ironic smile that quirked Rose's face. "Um, I think he might be a bit older than that" she corrected in wry amusement.

Foreman continued, encouraged by any sort of response. "Does he do a lot of travelling?" he asked, thinking with concern about exotic foreign pathogens. That actually provoked a snort of amusement before she schooled her features back into a polite mask.

"Yes, a fair bit" she intoned carefully, that confusing smile still flickering round the corners of her mouth.

The smile was snuffed out as Cameron asked "How long has he been unconcious?"

Rose swallowed, eyes returning to the still figure on the bed. "It's been about six hours" she muttered, voice heavy with worry. She looked up at Cameron, seeming to take strength from the symapthetic look on the young doctor's face, although her voice remained heavy with distress. "He seemed to be in a lot of pain before he collapsed."

"Was he clutching his chest?" Chase chimed in, obviously still obsessing over whatever sour note he'd heard in the man's heartbeat. Rose nodded slightly, pressing the coat tight to her torso with both arms as if her own heart were missing a beat.

Foreman looked at House, eager to move through the uncmfortable emotion lying heavy in the room to the pure science of the diagnosis. "Myocardial infarction?" he threw out there to get the ball rolling, unsurprised to see House roll his eyes.

"That's like saying a tree might have fallen in the forest." House rebuffed. "We need to know which tree, why and what little critter's been eating its way through the trunk."

"Aortic stenosis" Cameron chimed in, half statement, half question. "A congentical abnormality in the heart could have led to the pain and might explain whatever irregularity Chase heard."

Chase gave her a half grin for her unspoken support but gave his own suggestion with more sureity. "Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy" he stated firmly. "Caused by low levels of vitamin B1 or potassium. Would have resulted in a loss of appetite, explaining the weight loss. It can also cause a swelling of the feet and ankles." He reached over the bed to take the shoe from Foreman's hands, holding it up to punctuate his point. "Would explain why someone would buy shoes too big for them!" he encouraged.

House nodded distractedly. "It fits" he murmered. "Although it can't excuse the bad taste in socks. It would also be accompanied by a loss of sex drive." He raised an eyebrow at Rose. "So? Has your Doctor been banging you with less enthusiasm recently?"

The young girl flushed a deep scarlet, physically stumbling a step back from the crassness of the comment. "I don't … we're not… it's not like that." She spluttered with some heat. "We're just friends" she finished firmly, pointedly folding the leather coat neatly over the back of the wheelchair and clasping her hands behind her back.

House grinned at her embarrassment. "It's official" he crowed. "Anyone not tapping as fine a piece of ass as that is a very sick man." He ignored Rose's outraged glare, carrying on oblivious.

"Chase and Foreman, get a cardiac MRI and take some blood to confirm." He looked back at Rose who had gone still again, once more worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

"You can't lie to an MRI" he chanted in a sing song voice and grinned as the blood drained out of her previously flushed cheeks.


	8. Chapter 8

**Authors note: **Thanks so much for all the lovely reviews, although if anyone has any constructive criticism as to how to improve this story I'd also love to hear that (I'm a big girl, I can take it)! I'm starting to think that if I could stick this through to the end I may actually be rewarded by getting the reviews into triple figures! And then, of course, I could die a happy woman, my life finally complete (actually my life peaked earlier this year when I saw David Tennant in the flesh performing Hamlet alongside Patrick Stewart, it's all been downhill since then!!).

P.S. sorry for all the cliffhangers. It's an addiction!

**Disclaimer**: Okay, from now on consider it disclaimed!

**Chapter Eight**

**Alarm Call**

"No!!"

Cameron flinched as Rose's horror-struck cry rebounded around the cosy room. She reached forward hesitantly to place a hand on a tensed shoulder. "It's okay" she crooned gently, "an MRI is a harmless procedure. It just lets us look inside..."

Rose shrugged off the hand in irritation, stalking forward to go nose to nose, or at least nose to chin, with House. "You promised" she growled quietly. "You _swore_ that you'd help keep this secret. If you start doing loads of tests he'll get noticed and then … bad things will happen. Trust me on this."

Cameron shivered at the note of threat in Rose's voice and glanced uneasily at the door. What exactly had House gotten them mixed up in? What this girl unstable? She stepped forward to try to calm a suddenly volatile situation.

"I was wrong, you are an idiot. I'd remind you of the lesson 'everybody lies' but I don't suppose your tiny blonde brain remembers that far back."

Cameron closed her eyes in resignation as House once again poured petrol onto troubled waters. She edged away and started trying to figure out the most likely location of the nearest security guard.

"You seem to be under the mistaken impression that you have a say in what goes down here" House continued implacably. "Now normally, you might have a point. There's a certain Dean of Medicine you could go crying to who likes nothing better than to squash any pet project of mine, and believe me she has the ass to squash hard when she's in the mood." He took a step away from the window, forcing Rose to stumble backwards. "But you can't have it both ways. You want to work under the radar? Fine, I can loose any records in the system for a while, forget to do the paperwork. But that includes all those pesky consent forms for invasive medical procedures."

Cameron snorted and couldn't resist butting in. "And how is that different from every other patient? You never do the paperwork." She wasn't really surprised when neither party acknowledged her.

House continued in a lower, more intimate tone. "You brought him to me so I can work out how to fix him. To do that I will need tests. Probably many gruesome and painful tests. What did you think I was going to do, diagnose him with just a glance? Even I'm not that good." He paused, considering. "Well, not all the time."

Rose's furious glare started to crumple in uncertainty and Cameron was relieved to see her hands uncurl from tense claws.

House brushed past her and headed for the door, calling over his shoulder "Chase, Foreman, do the tests" he paused, glancing back at Rose before adding "and don't get caught. Cameron, get Rose something to eat other than a stolen pudding cup before she collapses from low blood sugar and we have twice as much paperwork not to do."

Cameron opened her mouth to make a retort but, with a flick of his cane, House hooked the door to slam it shut behind him, cutting off any objections and leaving him once again with the last word.

* * *

Chase pulled his head back sharply and flattened his body against the corridor wall, gesturing frantically with one hand for Foreman to keep back. He listened to the heavy footsteps of the retreating security guard tail off and let out a long breath, letting his head fall back against the wall.

"Tell me again why we're going along with this?" he asked, directing his comment towards the patchwork of ceiling tiles. He heard the squeak of a wonky gurney wheel as Foreman nudged the end of the bed into his hip.

"Because it's easier than standing up to House. Because you're dying to know what's going on. And because you find the girl attractive." Foreman whispered with a grin, ramming him in the stomach as Chase turned to glare at him.

Chase grabbed the end of the wheeled bed, giving a sharp push backwards and smirking as the wonky wheel stubbed hard against Foreman's shoe. The larger man hopped backwards, swearing under his breath and Chase turned around to pull the trolley behind him, easing it out into the main corridor. "You're enjoying this way too much" he hissed back over his shoulder.

Foreman shrugged, moving forward to regain his grip on the bed. "This guy seems fairly stable for the moment, there doesn't seem to be any immediate danger in indulging House's Hardy boys fantasy. Besides, I admit to being intrigued as to how this'll play out. Better than a day in the clinic cleaning up egg-nog vomit"

Chase gritted his teeth, quickening his pace as he tugged the gurney along behind him. "Cuddy's going to frikkin' kill us!" he muttered sourly.

Foreman grinned again. "I bet you fifty bucks that House works out the big secret before Cuddy catches on."

Chase stayed quiet for several seconds, reliving the rush of adrenaline that had surged at the sound of that pounding double beat. He opened his mouth then hesitated. It really wasn't worth the mockery to try to convince his stubborn colleague, but he'd be willing to bet more than a fifty that this would not be an easy day. "You're on" he confirmed as they reached the MRI room. He peered through the glass window into the reassuringly darkened room beyond. "We're in luck. Come on, let's get this done before anyone comes along." Despite the emptiness of the room, he found himself talking in a lowered voice as he pushed through the doors. He paused to flick the lights on, illuminating the hulking machine dominating the center of the room like an open mouth.

He spotted a neatly folded floral print hospital gown carefully placed on the end of the examination table and grinned. "Why don't you get the patient changed whilst I fire up the computers." He abandoned the trolley, marching forward towards the glassed off observation room, talking more loudly over Foreman's inarticulate sound of protest. "Don't want anything metallic in his clothes to mess with the readout, do we?" Chase was moving fast as he rounded the corner, the thick glass of the partition cutting off Foreman's grumbling as he started struggling with the flopping limbs of the unresisting comatose figure.

Chase was industriously ignoring the awkward activity from the room beyond whilst flicking various pieces of machinery into life. Foreman had the long lanky body slung over one shoulder in a fireman's carry, trying to slide the limp form onto the padded platform of the machine. Neither was therefore in a position to notice the cloud of glowing particles than curled from the unconscious man's lips. The sparkling motes swirled up over Foreman's broad back to disperse around the room. Wherever they touched metal they vanished with noiseless flashes.

"You ready yet?" Chase's voice crackled tinnily from the speaker linking the two parts of the room. Foreman didn't waste breath for an answer as he finished fitting a white cage over the skinny chest, but he did take the time for a rather graphic hand gesture as he finished settling the pale hairy legs straight on the sliding cradle.

He joined Chase in the antechamber to find the fair-haired doctor scowling as he tweaked the tuning knob beside a monitor that flickered with a pale gray glow. "I think it might be on the fritz. I'm having trouble booting up" Chase complained. Foreman just shot him a look.

"Well then maybe next time I should do the complex button pushing and you can do all the heavy lifting" he commented dryly, taking a seat and typing in the initialisation code. The machine thrummed into life, the cycling electromagnets rising up through the register from the subliminal to the uncomfortable. The platform slid forward smoothly, delivering the body resting on top of it into the bore of the magnet like a serpent hungrily swallowing its prey.

The two doctors sat back in their chairs and waited as an image began to condense on the high resolution computer screen in shades of grey and white.

"What the hell..." Foreman muttered, leaning forward to peer closer at the screen. "Is that ... hang on a minute, if that's cardiac tissue then what's .." He blinked, the slack muscles of his open mouth tightening into an impatient frown as the screen flickered and the globular, grainy shapes jumped and fractured. "Can you clear this up?" he demanded urgently.

Chase tapped at the keyboard in front of him with frantic key stokes but the snowstorm of static on the screen just condensed into further obscurity. In sudden frustration Chase slammed the palm of his hand against the side of the flat screen monitor.

As if responding to the impact, the man on the table in the room beyond suddenly arched upwards, his spine a tight bow of pain. Chase half rose out of his chair in alarm and watched aghast as a nimbus of orange light swirled out like smoke from the tunnel of the machine.

Both doctors flinched as, with a loud bang, the fluorescent light bulb in the room beyond burst in a shower of electrical discharge and a glittering rain of glass shards.

"Shit!" Foreman gasped, sending his wheeled chair scooting back across the room as the screen in front of them fizzled to blackness and the computer erupted into a belching cloud of black smoke.

"Oh God!" Chase groaned, peering into the coiling dimness beyond the glass partition, punctuated at several points by diminishing flickers of yellow sparks that licked over the surface of the large machine. "We are _so_ fired" he muttered. He crept forward to hover uncertainly at the open doorway, coughing as a tendril of acrid smoke made its way into his lungs.

"You can't go in there, it's not safe" Foreman called out in alarm. Chase pushed forwards, as if the words propelled him into the room.

"We've got to check on Mr Smith" he called back firmly, stepping gingerly over the crunch of broken glass.

Foreman remained motionless, waiting anxiously, then after a few seconds called out "Well? Is he okay?"

There was a long pause, then Chase's voice emerged from the gloom beyond. "Um, not exactly" he called in a wobbling voice. Foreman finally stood on shaking legs, bracing himself against the wall as Chase's pale face reappeared in the doorway. Chase took a deep breath and continued in a frozen calm tone "Foreman, I'm afraid we've lost our patient."


	9. Chapter 9

**Authors note: **I'm worried that I should maybe up the rating slightly for mild naughtiness, and need to get a second opinion from you all! There may be some inappropriate language coming up, I read about certain symptoms and couldn't resist! Come on, tell me you haven't wondered about the doctor's anatomy! Plus I think there may be more swearing. House has a foul mouth. Honestly, you'd be shocked at some of the things he's come out with that I've had to censor!

Many thanks for the feedback. I must have the most helpful and intelligent reviewers on the net. You guys actually give me useful tips rather than badly spelled flames! It restores my hope in humanity! Sorry for the short chapters, I'm a very slow writer.

**Chapter Nine**

**Rise and shine**

"What?"

Foreman exploded into the examination room and stood staring down at the very empty platform. The large machine broke the silence with a sad little cough and a mushroom of oily smoke belched out from the dark cavern of its mouth. Foreman followed the path of the fumes distractedly as it blossomed across the sensors in the ceiling, then slumped with a long suffering sigh a moment before the sprinklers whirred into action.

The two doctors stared in resignation at each other for a second through the rapidly thinning smoke as the stale water drenched them both in a battering bombardment of ice needles. "This is ridiculous! Where could he have gone? The guy was comatose just a moment ago." Chase shouted above the hiss of falling water.

Foreman hesitated before answering. "You know that officially he's not our responsibility?" he threw out there rather wistfully.

Chase snorted. "Yeah, right, try telling that to House". He tossed his head to flip the wet mat of his fringe away from his eyes, and gestured impatiently to Foreman to follow him. "Come on, I doubt if he's got far, and I really don't want to be here when security arrives. Or Cuddy for that matter."

Foreman nodded in fervent agreement and the two men almost collided as they rushed for the exit. Chase paused, dripping, in the corridor; glancing round desperately, then suddenly elbowed Foreman and pointed to where the passage widened out into the ward rooms beyond. The hunched figure of their patient was propped, stiff armed, against a glass partition. As they reached him, he was peering intently at his reflection in the polished pane, tilting his head to the left and right and running his tongue over his teeth before giving a nod of tentative satisfaction.

"Mr Smith" Chase called out, running forward down the corridor. "You shouldn't be..."

The man turned his head to face them and blinded Chase with a thousand kilowatt grin. "Oh, hello! What do you think?" he queried earnestly. "I mean the ears are a definite improvement but to be honest I'm a bit disappointed about the hair." He ran a hand through the crazily disarrayed tufts. "Maybe some sort of a quiff? I always did enjoy the hairstyles in the fifties."

He spun to face them, leaning his back against the glass as he shot out an open palm towards them. "I'm the Doctor by the way, but since you called me Mr Smith I'm assuming you've been talking to Rose Tyler." He glanced around the empty corridors before continuing at the same breakneck speed. "Where's she got to? She has this terrible habit of wandering off, but I suppose the others all did the same." The grin was cranked up another notch. "Still, I suppose even Rose can't get into too much trouble in a hospital. Nice place you've got here by the way. Very clean. All this glass makes me feel like I'm inside a goldfish bowl. It reminds me a bit of this one time I was caught..." He broke off with a gasp and closed his eyes briefly as a spasm of pain pulled the corners of his eyes into deep creases.

Chase peered at him anxiously. "Are you okay? Hey Foreman, get the gurney!"

Dark eyes opened wearily and the Doctor gave him a wry smile. "I'm not exactly performing at my best here" he confessed with a wince. Chase swayed back in alarm as the man in front of him swung a fist up to slam it hard into the left side of his chest with a disgusted grimace. Then he looked back up at the two doctors hovering in concern and hiked the grin back into position. "Of course I didn't really expect to be when undergoing a severe ambient complexity caused by a massive overdose of Artron energy, but c'est la vie."

Foreman stared blankly at him, then arched both eyebrow's. "What?!" he queried in bemusement.

The Doctor's grin slipped as his breath hissed out between gritted teeth and he lent his head back against the glass. Chase reached a hand out to grasp his shoulder, steadying him, then withdrew with a yelp as an orange spark arced towards his fingertips. The Doctor shrugged his shoulder apologetically. "Oops, sorry about that. My bioplasmic field is still a bit supercharged." He looked down at the growing puddle collecting around each of Chase's feet. His eye's drew together in a naughty schoolboy's grimace of contrition. "I think I might have broken your MRI machine. Sorry." He patted his hands down the sides of his loose fitting paper gown. "I'll probably be able to fix that for you pretty easily if I could just find my jacket." He gasped and creased forward at the waist, his hands reaching up to grasp the hair on his loosely dangling head in clenched fists. "Aargh" he breathed out in a soft, pained voice. "Well, maybe that will have to wait a while".

Chase bent down towards the doubled-up figure, peering up into the anguished face. "Mr Smith, you should sit down" he urged in concern. "There was a problem with our scanning equipment; it could have had some adverse affects."

The Doctor straightened suddenly, his face clearing, and slid a step sideways until he was free of the looming presence of the two white-coated men. He pushed away from the wall briskly and started walking backwards down the corridor, calling out to them brightly as he went.

"Actually, although I normally find fluctuating magnetic fields extremely unpleasant; by complete random chance, feeding me into your antiquated little medical diagnostic apparatus was one of the best things you could have done for me, and I thank you for that."

Foreman cocked his head. "What?" he asked in disbelieving puzzlement.

The speed of the Doctor's speech increased even further along with the surety of his backward footsteps. " The Larmour frequency of the radio pulse caused the protons in my body to process in a different direction and then release that extra stored energy. Which would be all fine and dandy, and just what the good Dr Damadian intended, except for the fact that my body is currently bursting with excess energy, more than even my superior physiology can take and certainly a million times greater than the signals that are usually converted through the Fourier transform into resonance images. Your machine exploded because you tried to plug a car battery into a triple A slot."

His backward march veered off-course and his shoulder crashed into the wall again and he gripped his head with a groan. The two stunned doctors started into action and sprinted up to him, grabbing an arm each as he sagged between them like a damp dishcloth.

"Damn!" he muttered, breathing heavily. "Only a temporary reprieve." His face twisted and the two men holding him felt his knees buckle as a violent tremor ran through his body. "My biogenic enzymes are breaking down. No functioning metal ion chelators. Iron and superoxides accumulating in my brain" the sentences came in short bursts, punctuated with increasingly laboured gasps for breath.

Suddenly the heaving and shuddering of his body stilled and the Doctor shot a hand out to grasp a fistful of Foreman's lab-coat. He used it to haul himself upright, piercing the taller man with an intense stare. "Listen to me, this is very, very important". Foreman found himself holding his breath at the urgent authority in the carefully pronounced words. "Is there ... a cafeteria nearby?"

There was a stunned silence before Foreman exploded with a rather high pitched "What?!"

The doctor lost his grip on the fabric of his coat as another shudder wracked his body. "Aaargh! No time" he gasped "Still heading for a neural implosion.. brain collapsing" his face was a stretched rictus of agony and his voice grated out words between clenched teeth. He turned his head to face Chase. "Find Rose" he growled out. "Tell her I need..."

Once more, with startling suddenness, his shaking body went very still. His face cleared and he straightened his legs, taking his arm from around Chase's neck and shooting out a pointed finger. "What's that doing there?" he asked in a conversational tone, voice untroubled by anything other than intense curiosity.

Chase felt his mouth hanging open and hurriedly snapped it shut as he followed the direction of the pointing finger. All he could see of note was a slightly tacky artificial Christmas tree standing to one side of the ward doors. He hesitated before answering in a deeply confused tone "Um, it's Christmas Eve, the decorations have been up for..."

"It's a monitoring post, receiving and sending out signals. Capable of independent action" the Doctor interrupted him absently, his brows pulled together in a thoughtful frown. "Luckily it looks like it's dormant at the moment. Probably awaiting instructions after reporting back details on the last energy surge to whoever sent it here."

The brief respite ended as the Doctors body was wracked by such a violent convulsion that it wrenched him free from the grasp of the two men and flung him back into a crumpled heap against the corridor wall.

"Damn!" Chase yelped, crouching forward in front of the slumped figure and staring up at Foreman in alarm. "Where's the nearest crash cart?"

"Oh, no, no, no, no ... no!" the Doctor gasped, struggling to force words past gritted teeth. "Bad idea! I have ... allergies." Despite the tendon twanging tension contorting his body he still managed to quirk one cheek in a dry grin. "My body would react badly to a lot of your medicines. One sniff of an aspirin and I have the unfortunate tendency to go into a massive pulmonary and cerebral embolism. Makes headaches a bit of a pain."

His body spasmed again and a low groan broke free of the corded column of his pale throat. His hand reached out to clasp the back of Chase's neck, pulling their foreheads within inches of each other. "Listen!" he hissed urgently. "Find Rose ... tell her to get me away from here. It's not safe ..." He gasped, struggling to fill lungs long enough to force out the words. "Tell her.. something's coming" he breathed out as his eyelids finally fluttered closed. The grip of the hand clutching Chase's hair loosened then fell limply to the ground.

Chase rocked back on his heels, his shocked gaze meeting Foreman's stunned expression. There was a long moment of silence, then Foreman threw his hands into the air with an explosive cry of disbelief.

"What?!"


	10. Chapter 10

**Authors note: **Yippee! I made it to over 100 reviews! This means that, despite my parent's and friends' embarrassed incomprehension, by my own standards I am now a storming success. I would like to thank each and everyone one of you who helped me to achieve this state of nirvana (*sniff*). I couldn't have done it without you! My thanks especially go to Allen Pitt for helping to dig me out of a plot hole!

I am actually ridiculously nervous about posting this chapter as I am terribly afraid of offending people. Hope I've not crossed a line!

**Chapter Ten**

**Exposed**

Chase peered out through a crack in the children's ward door, tensing as a familiar lopsided figure lurched into view around the bend of the long, garishly decorated corridor.

"House's on his way" he hissed. "How's the Doctor doing?"

He felt the glare that Foreman sent him set the hairs on the back of his neck prickling.

"_Mr Smith_ is stable for now. His fever's dramatically reduced." Foreman commented, his voice laced with heavy disapproval. "You know we have no evidence that he has any sort of medical qualification? And from the sort of drivel he was spouting, I for one deeply doubt it."

"Damn, I missed the spouting drivel?" Chase jumped backwards as a blow of a cane slammed the door open, allowing House to sweep into the room with a smirk. "Because I don't think I've reached my quota for today. Luckily I have you two here to help fix that."

He paused; glacial gaze flicking between the beads of moisture sparkling in the stubbled hair of Foreman's shaved head to where the damp patches of Chase's blue scrubs clung clammily to his chest. "Well!" he exclaimed, his grin widening. "I always knew you two were a bit wet, but if I'd have known you were going to make a T-Shirt contest out of it I'd have sent Cameron."

"There was ... an incident" Chase muttered, looking anywhere but at House's mocking eyes.

"Yes, through my tremendous powers of investigation I somehow managed to hear about you blowing up a three million dollar diagnostic machine, sending the whole hospital into chaos." House stalked forward into the room, forcing the two damp men to back up to make room for him by the low bed. "So much for the subtle approach." House leant his weight on his cane, both hands clasped over the handle in a clenched grip. "If either of you fancied an alternative career as a spy, I'd advise you to reconsider."

"It wasn't our fault!" Chase exclaimed with some heat. Foreman cut off any further protests with a raised hand, continuing in a more resigned tone.

"The machine was faulty before we got there. It was giving scrambled images even before it ... malfunctioned."

House lifted an eyebrow at him, before glancing over at the paper-gowned figure sprawled awkwardly over the child-sized bed. "It exploded immediately after you began scanning him?" he asked quietly. "Interesting" the word was drawled out in a distracted fashion.

Foreman protested with vehement insistence. "It was just a coincidence; we'd removed any metallic objects from ..."

"Not necessarily!" Chase interrupted eagerly. "The Doctor said ..." he paused at Foreman's glower, then continued defiantly "he mentioned something about a lack of ion chelators. Maybe this is a pre-existing condition he's already aware of. If his body is unable to sequester excess heavy metals it could have led to a build-up of iron in his tissues." Chase shrugged. "Maybe that could have interacted with the magnetic pulses and caused the MRI machine to malfunction."

"Excellent!" House exclaimed in over-exaggerated excitement. "I've always wanted to live in an ACME cartoon! I'll have to practise sticking my eyes come out on stalks for the next time Cuddy bends over."

Chase frowned in puzzlement but Foreman broke in with sarcastic amusement.

"He means that the patient would have had to have swallowed half an anvil's worth of iron filings for there to be enough metal in his system to affect the machine." He continued in a more bad tempered, impatient tone. "Anyway, I don't know why you're listening to anything this guy had to say. He's obviously a raving lunatic."

Chase scowled at him. "I wouldn't say that!" he protested, although his denial seemed to lack force. "Okay, so maybe he came off as a little eccentric, but you can't deny he knew his stuff!"

Foreman's eyebrows arched high as he stared at Chase in horror. "He was talking gibberish!" he asserted, his voice loud and high pitched.

Chase hesitated, then grudgingly allowed "Well maybe, but at least it was intelligent sounding gibberish."

House had been watching their debate with intent eyes but now broke through the staring match by slapping one palm against Chase's wet chest and shoving Foreman a step back with the flat of his cane. "Children, please" he crooned. "Save the fighting for when I have money resting on it." He pushed past them to walk over to the window, picking up the red crayon from where it had lain abandoned on the sill. "In between annihilating an expensive piece of hospital equipment and captivating Chase with his dazzling mumbo-jumbo, I'm assuming that our patient displayed some new diagnostic symptoms during his brief period of consciousness?"

"He woke up?!" The three men jumped at the piercingly shrill cry of hope from the figure who had appeared in the open doorway. Rose shot past them to fall to her knees beside the tiny bed. "Doctor! Doctor? Can you hear me? It's me... It's Rose!" she called loudly, her lips almost brushing his ear.

"Of course!" House exclaimed, slapping a melodramatic palm to his forehead "That's how we should have been treating coma patients all these years, by shouting at them." He pulled a wry face at Rose's glare "Well now I feel so silly for wasting all that medicine."

Rose ignored him, looking frantically at Chase and Foreman. "What happened?" she demanded. "What did he say?"

Foreman shrugged "Not much! He ran off down the corridor babbling something about attacking Christmas decorations, then collapsed in severe pain."

He ignored Rose's puzzled and worried expression to look over at House. "Said something about his brain imploding. Might have been a cluster headache?"

House scowled in thought before writing 'neurological symptoms' on the window. He hesitated then added ''electric' personality?', pressing down hard with the crayon on the apostrophes to make them stand out in ironic emphasis.

"A subarachnoid haemorrhage could have led to the fever, alteration of consciousness and cardiac arrhythmia" a soft voice came from the doorway. House looked up to see Cameron leaning against the doorframe, carrying a paper plate piled with slices of iced fruitcake. She straightened, walking forward to offer the plate to Chase and Foreman. "Merry Christmas!" she greeted them with long-suffering irony. Foreman ignored her but Chase took a piece and bit into it with relish.

"You could do a CT to confirm but Cuddy wouldn't be too impressed if you blew up another scanner today." House muttered in droll amusement, still staring thoughtfully at the window.

"I thought we agreed that it was a coincidence that …" Foreman broke in angrily. House cut him off with a look, eyebrows raised at the aggressiveness of his tone.

"No, you decided that. And with uncharacteristic vehemence." House eyed him speculatively. "Which makes me think that you are either trying to hide something from me or from yourself." He turned away from the speechless man to talk to Chase and Cameron.

"HFE hereditary hemochromatosis" House stated with finality. "Excessive absorption of dietary iron might have led to just enough of an increase in body iron storage to affect an MRI machine already on the fritz." He pointed his cane at Chase. "What did the blood tests show?" he barked.

Chase's face clouded and he shuffled his feet awkwardly. "The results aren't back yet." He hunched his shoulders under House's interrogatory glare. "We were kind of busy with the MRI so I bribed a lab tech to do some unofficial over-time. I paid him a hundred dollars to keep it off the books" he added defensively.

Foreman snorted. "This case is costing more than some of us, who weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouths, can afford" he grumbled. "If Cuddy tries to take the cost for the damages out of our salaries, our grandchildren are going to be working indentured labour."

Chase just gave him an evil grin. "Plus it'll be worse for you when you owe me that extra fifty."

House cut through the banter with an angry scowl. "If she doesn't have the good sense to fire you then I just might" he exclaimed. "I had thought I wouldn't have to rely on a half drunk, bored incompetent for results." He shot Chase an evil look. "Guess I should have known better." He pointed an implacable finger at the bed. "Get another sample. Do a serum ferratin test yourself, with your own little hands. Twice. Before our patient turns into the Tin Man. Cameron, you get a lumbar puncture to check for hemorrhaging." He barked out the orders to the disgruntled pair, who sighed but moved obediently together to the cupboard high on one wall to fetch the kits.

"Hang on a minute!" Rose burst out in alarm, perching herself protectively on the edge of the bed, crossing her arms defensively over her rather grubby pink sweatshirt. "You were supposed to be fixing him, not just draining all his fluids. What are you, some kind of a vampire?"

House sighed, rolling his eyes at her protective stance. "Cue the cowardly lion" he muttered in disgust, then squinted at her dyed blonde hair. "Or maybe the scarecrow, since you are clearly in need of a brain. Do we really need to repeat the discussion about how I can't diagnose your Doctor just by looking …" He paused, head cocked slightly to one side, his gaze vacant.

Rose stared at him in puzzlement. "Dr House?" she queried uncertainly.

Cameron came to stand by her shoulder, giving her boss an indulgent smile as she handed Rose a piece of cake. "Shhh! He's having an idea."

Rose nibbled on the frosting absently, her face showing some trepidation as House's grin stretched evilly.

"How big are your boyfriend's testicles?" he barked at her.

Rose choked on the cake, crumbs flying across the bed as she bent over in a paroxysm of coughing. House raised one eyebrow at her, smirking at her as Cameron slapped her repeatedly on the back. "Hmm, I guess for once 'just friends' isn't a euphamism" he mused, then limped forwards towards the bed.

"Sexual disorders such as small genitalia are symptoms of iron overload disorders." He explained, pushing her off the side of the bed with his cane so that she had to stand hurriedly. "Come on!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Let the dog see the rabbit!"

He grasped the hem of the paper gown, pulling it up, but his eyes were fixed on Rose's bright red face as she stared determinedly at the ceiling. He grinned as he spotted her eyes flick downwards, almost involuntarily before snapping back up again, her face burning even hotter. At this point House let his own eyes drop down, then blinked.

Cameron's voice came out rather weakly from beside him. "That's … not hypogonadism."

Chase snorted, his Australian accent twanging dryly. "I'll say! It seems the Doctor has some real cojones!"

Rose snatched the thin fabric from House's hand, smoothing the flowered gown down over the Doctors knobbly knees. She glared at House, although he noticed a slight flicker of a grin around the corners of her mouth as she muttered to herself "Well that answers that" in a thoughtful tone.

House harrumphed, taking a step back from the bed, before commenting irritably. "It's not conclusive. Take the samples."

Rose bristled again. "I don't think they'll help you" she protested, hesitantly. "The Doctor's ... different. He's not ... built like .. normal people."

House snorted and Cameron groaned, trying to smother whatever comment was brewing with the force of her glare. Chase just nodded absently. "He did say he had a lot of allergies" he inserted helpfully, barely looking as he drew a new sample of blood with the ease of long practice.

House shot him an impatient look, train of thought derailed. "So run an allergen specific IgE test on his blood while you're at it!" he snapped brusquely.

Chase withdrew the syringe then retreated as Cameron moved forward, urging Rose gently to one side and deftly rolling the Doctor onto his side. She cut away a square of the paper material from over the Doctor's lower back and, with a quick motion, swabbed the skin with iodine. She looked up with kind eyes and asked "Do you want to hold his hand? This won't take a moment."

Rose looked on in alarm as Cameron picked a wickedly long needle out of the surgical kit she'd laid open on the bed. "Where are you going to stick that?" she squeaked, swallowing hard as she stared at the three inch long steel spike with wide eyes. "I'm not sure this is ..." She broke off as, without pausing to listen, Cameron inserted the needle with a smooth motion and drew back the plunger. She held it up to the light, one thumb pressed over the yellow stained flesh of the puncture site.

"Give me that!" House snapped, snatching the syringe from her and the three doctors clustered round to examine the quicksilver liquid that shimmered within.

"It's supposed to be clear!" Chase muttered in disbelief.

"But it's clearly not!" House retorted distractedly. "Interesting." He fixed his eyes on the flickering ripples as if hypnotized, then blinked and shook his head sharply, thrusting the syringe back at Cameron.

"Test it" he snapped. "Check for mercury levels" he added thoughtfully.

Cameron nodded, heading for the door Chase on her heels, when Rose's voice cracked out in firm authority.

"Wait!" she hesitated, turning to roll the Doctor onto his back and reaching one hand out to softly brush a few strands of brown hair from his pale forehead. Then she straightened purposefully and turned to the pair with determination. "I'm coming with you" Rose stated. Chase opened his mouth to protest but Rose ploughed on. "I'm only going to allow these tests if I can ensure that his ... samples ... are destroyed afterwards" she announced, chin firm, before adding quietly "It's what he would want" with an anxious glance back at the bloodless face.

House waved them away impatiently with one hand, his eyes still fixed on the Doctor thoughtfully. "Fine, fine! Take Dorothy with you" he muttered distractedly. "I want some time alone with my patient."

The exodus towards the door paused and three sets of eyes fixed on him in deep suspicion. He looked up, rolling his eyes. "It's okay!" he exclaimed in exasperation. "Foreman can stay and chaperone to ensure I don't do anything too despicable!"

He waited whilst Chase held the door open for Cameron and Rose, who both left still looking deeply dubious. He waited until the door had clicked shut before launching into a high pitched manic cackle, fingers dancing in fluttering claws at either side of his face. "Ah, ha ha ha haa! I've got you now, my pretty!" he screeched, turning to loom over the still figure in the bed with an evil grin.


	11. Chapter 11

**Authors note: **Thanks for all the encouragement and help in the reviews. I depend on you guys to help me spot and correct my mistakes.

I'm sorry if the length of time I've been holding out on you has gotten annoying but I swear all that is about to change. You can't hide anything from House, anyway, once he decides to pay attention so I guess it's about time for the shit to hit the fan!

The next chapter should be fun to write if I'm up to it! By the way, it's my birthday tomorrow! The best present in the world would be loads of reviews!!!

* * *

**Chapter Eleven**

**Cover Up**

Rose perched on the edge on the work counter, swinging her legs absently. She reached out a hand to fiddle with the tap on a glass tube clamped above a large flask, causing a clear liquid to drip from the tip. The splashes sounded loud in the stillness of the small lab, prompting Chase to glance up in amusement.

"I can see you're bored" he drawled "but try not to break anything. We're already running up a bit of a tab here."

Rose snorted. "Trust me! This isn't the first time I've been stuck waiting around in a freakin' Frankenstein's laboratory!" she muttered, twisting the knob back until the dripping stopped.

"Aren't you done yet?" she asked him impatiently, uncomfortably aware that her voice had taken on a childish, whining tone.

"Nope!" he responded cheerfully, swinging his stool around to face her. "It'll probably take a couple of hours for the tests to run." He flicked a dismissive hand over an untidy stack of paperwork splayed out on the side next to a row of test tubes. "I'm having to do the whole lot over again after all!" he complained with a grimace. "That idiot Mike screwed these up so badly that it's complete gibberish!" He quirked an ironic half-smile at her. "House is going to have fun with the 'I told you so's!"

"I think I'll be able to distract his attention with the sparkly cerebrospinal fluid!" Cameron called out from where she was hunched over a complex looking machine.

"Yeah, what's up with that? That was just weird." Chase queried, slouching back on his stool.

Cameron glanced up at him with a resigned shrug. "House was right, it's practically swimming with methylmercury. I mean I've read articles about Minimata disease but I didn't actually think that it was possible to accumulate such a heavy load."

Rose felt her breath catch as the two doctors exchanged long looks, the unspoken conversation causing Chase's smooth features to crease in a frown and Cameron to glance at Rose and then look away quickly.

"So!" Chase broke out with rather forced cheerfulness. "Since we have time to kill why don't you fill us in on what secrets you feel you could share with us about our mysterious patient?" He winked at her, his sea green eyes twinkling in a way that distracted Rose momentarily from her dark thoughts.

"I don't really know how much help I can be" Rose stalled him, rather wanting to keep the attractive doctor talking but uncomfortably aware that biting her tongue around guys she found cute wasn't really her strong suit; something that her friends used to mock her about when they were out on the lash.

"I sometimes wonder how much I really know him, you know?" She leaned forward, relaxing into the cool mossy depths of his sympathetic gaze. "Especially now. It's like I only ever get to see the surface layer that he wants to show the world. It can be frustrating as hell but you kind of get used to it when you fall into his orbit." She paused, shivering. "But sometimes I sort of catch a glimpse of what's beneath, and it takes my breath away. It's like when you're standing on a high cliff and you get this stupid urge to fling yourself out and fall, and it's bloody terrifying 'cause I've got a crappy sense of balance. But he just seems to stay there, poised, right on the brink. All the time."

She blinked, refocusing her eyes on the handsome face in front of her and felt herself blushing. "O god, I'm sorry" she gushed. "You must think I'm insane going on like this."

"Oh I dunno, I've heard of people who are drawn towards destructive relationships." He grinned, glancing over at where Cameron had her back to them, hunched in determined industry over the scanner in front of her. As if she felt his eyes resting on her, she turned her head to glare at him.

The other doctor opened her mouth to make some comment but was distracted by the sound of distant music from the corridor beyond. "What's that?" she muttered instead, rising smoothly to her feet and moving towards the open doorway.

"Sounds like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen!" Chase called out helpfully. Rose took the opportunity to break away from the uncomfortably intimate tête-à-tête and slipped down from the counter to join Cameron at the glass paneled wall.

Chase scowled in disappointment at Cameron and snapped out impatiently "What's the big deal? So what if someone's playing Christmas Carols? It happens to be Christmas Day!"

Cameron raised a delicately arched eyebrow at him. "Exactly. It's early Christmas morning. Only the dying or the masochistic would be here rather than home with their families." She looked back down the corridor with a frown. "So why is a costumed brass band wasting their time serenading an empty hospital floor?"

Rose felt a familiar prickle crawl over her skin, causing the hairs on the nape of her neck to rise. She took a few steps out into the corridor, staring at the three bulky figures in their cheap and cheesy Santa suits. Rose felt the confused curiosity the two doctors were radiating as they came to hover behind her but she kept her narrowed gaze locked on the geometrically faceted, metal masks.

The hall went silent as the trio all broke off playing abruptly, mid-measure, and adjusted their black gauntleted grip on their instruments. The lead trombonist lowered his horn to hip level, aiming it like a gangster with a sub-machine gun. A long tongue of fire licked out from the brass mouth, reaching nearly half of the twelve feet separating the two groups and making the air spit and sizzle with the heat of its passing.

Rose heard Cameron yelp in fear and surprise and Chase swear violently as both of them crouched down, cringing away from the heat. She felt a little guilty that her first reaction was actually relief at an event that could almost be considered normal in the insanity of her life.

"Now _this _is a song that I know!" she cried with a manic grin.

She turned and grabbed Chase's hand, pulling him away from the doorway, beckoning broadly for Cameron to follow them with her free arm as she sang out. "I think the chorus goes ... 'Run'!"

* * *

"Well? What are you waiting for?" House barked, snapping Foreman out of his bemused and weary slouch. "No matter how many sprigs of mistletoe and beefy hospital porters there are between her office and diagnostics, you can't expect Cuddy to be distracted forever." He waved a hand over the unconscious man beneath him. "We need to find out everything we can about our new toy before it gets confiscated."

He lent down a hand and tugged one of the side ties of the paper gown free of its bow, pulling a flap of the material to one side to reveal a triangle of pale flesh, sparsely dotted with dark hairs. "I might as well do a proper exam, see what you monkeys missed." He released the gown to point absently at the leather jacket still crumpled on the wheelchair where it had been discarded earlier. "You stick to your strengths and rifle through his wallet."

Foreman rolled his eyes but walked over to the clothing obediently. "I'm sure Dr. Wilson would have some comment to make about your determination to see this guy naked" he drawled laconically, retrieving the jacket and delving a hand into one pocket.

House snorted, not looking up as he leaned to one side to run a fingernail up the insole of one of the large bare feet dangling over the end of the bed. "Wilson should never be in the same room as this guy. I've already given him an inferiority complex!" He frowned, the note of distraction in his voice saying loudly to Foreman that House was merely sniping on autopilot. "Pass me your stethoscope" he snapped.

Foreman frowned. "It's disappeared, remember?" he muttered in a petulant tone, eying House darkly whilst fumbling one arm into a surprisingly deep pocket. He paused as his fingers brushed over a familiar shape. Foreman pulled an old and battered piece of equipment from an opening that he would have guessed too small for it to easily fit through. "But it seems this guy carries one around in his pocket. I guess he is a doctor after all" he mused, chucking the bundle of tubing underarm at his boss, who fumbled it out of the air with one hand.

"Never assume anything. There are other uses for a stethoscope." Foreman hesitated, wondering if House's leered comment was referring to criminal activities or if there was a perverted use for the equipment that he ought to know about. He ventured his hand back into the pocket, fumbling around inside with more apprehension.

"Oookay" he drawled, pulling out a brown spotted banana and laid it on the bed. "Then I really don't want to know what you make off these!" A yellow rubber duck was placed beside it, followed by a strange looking long, thin object that he assumed to be a pen torch of some kind.

House glanced over at the pile but then his attention snapped back to his patient as his fingers brushed over the pale chest. Instead of using the antique stethoscope in his hand he pressed two fingers against the carotid pulse in the neck of the man beneath him. "What temp did you clock him at earlier?" he snapped.

"He was running a fever of a little over a hundred but I checked him a few minutes ago and he felt like he was leveling off" Foreman replied.

"Remind me to never fly with you then as you don't seem capable of noticing when the pilot has, in fact, passed out over the controls and is heading for a crash!"

Foreman dropped the coat with a frown and hurried over to the bed, placing a large palm over a forehead that had the look and feel of alabaster. "Damn!" he muttered. "His temperature's crashed. He's going into hypothermic shock. We've got to call for help, get some heat packs in here."

House didn't move, just stood there staring down thoughtfully at his patient. "We could. Alternatively we could cut into an artery and drain some of his blood" he drawled out the last word in a bad Transylvanian accent.

Foreman paused in his rush towards the door, turning back to face his boss with apprehensive confusion. "You want to choose now to live up to the names a patient's family member calls you? There've been far more appropriate ones in the past than vampire."

House ignored him, pointing towards the door. "Grab a phlebotomy kit. I'll get him tourniquetted up." He glanced up in irritation when Foreman didn't move from his frozen position. "Look, the heavy metal accumulation has obviously started to affect his hypothalamus. We need to reduce the iron load of his blood, which we can do easily by reducing the amount of his blood. You never know, if we send a pint or two down to Chase he might finally get around to finishing those lab tests."

Foreman sighed, giving into the inevitable, and stalked out into the corridor in search of the nearest supply cupboard.

He returned a few minutes later, dragging a stainless steel trolley behind him and muttering darkly under his breath as he glared at where House was bent over their increasingly pale patient, walking his long fingers over the shadowed ridges of his ribs.

"Does this guy look odd to you?" House called out to him without looking up. Foreman raised an eyebrow at the other man's back then finished pushing the trolley over to the bed, picking up a limp, cold arm and tying a length of rubber tubing above the elbow.

"You mean apart from the fact that he's turning into a Popsicle?" he tapped a vein and inserted a needle smoothly, watching the dark liquid creep down the IV tubing. He glanced up at where House was still bent over the patient's chest. "Is tickling some sort of obscure test for hemochromatosis that I haven't heard about?"

House paused, fingers still stoking lightly over the bottom edge of the patient's ribcage. House finally turned to face him, eyes sparkling with something Foreman couldn't quite identify. "We need to get this man to an X-ray machine, stat!" he called out melodramatically.

Foreman frowned, gesturing down at the rapidly filling blood bag. "Do you think you're wrong about the diagnosis? Because if so we shouldn't be ..."

"Wrong? Me?! Wash your mouth out!" House snapped in an aghast tone, deftly disengaging the swollen plastic bag and attaching another. He held the sloshing liquid up to the light, squinting at it intently. "I'd ask you if this looked odd to you but we've already established that you're deeply unobservant."

Foreman peered at the blood, spotting a slight orangey, metallic sheen to the dark liquid, and started wracking his brain for diseases that this could be a symptom for.

He opened his mouth to respond, then jumped as the door to the room slammed open. It ricocheted off the wall with a thunderclap that preceded a whirlwind of motion as the blond girl dragged Chase into the room, a red faced Cameron stumbling after them.

House stared at them for a moment before tusking in exaggerated disapproval. "I don't see any lab results."

Chase paused in his labored breathing to glare at him in astonishment. "We're being chased by three maniacs in masks, one of them with a flamethrower. I'm sorry I didn't stop to finish the damn tests!"

Foreman stared at him in disbelief, looking for some sign that that the joke was about to crack, but felt his heart rate skip up a notch as a panting Cameron slammed the door shut and lent her weight against it, a look of real fear on her flushed face.

Foreman watched, wordlessly, as Rose spotted the odd-shaped tube he'd left on the bed and dove on it in desperation. She fiddled with it for a moment then growled in frustration and threw herself to her knees beside the bed.

"Doctor!" she called into the patient's ear again. She thrust the device into his unresisting hand, curling his fingers around the shaft. "Wake up!"

Foreman saw House slap a palm to his face, shaking his head in disgust, and broke out of his trance to step forward to move the girl away from the bed before she could dislodge the IV needle. Rose shook off his hand and grabbed the paper clad shoulders beneath her, shaking the limp body till the head lolled.

Suddenly Cameron was sent flying forward, crumpling into a heap by the bed as once again the door slammed back into the wall. Foreman blinked in surprise at the familiar jolly suited figure standing in the doorway, pointing a brass trombone at them in a menacing way.

Rose's cries increased in volume to a shrill scream. "Doctor! Help us!" she shrieked urgently.

Without any warning signs of returning consciousness, the figure in the bed was abruptly sitting bolt upright, one arm extended and trailing the red line of the IV tube. His finger pressed down on the device in his hand, causing a shrill whine and soft blue glow to fill the room. He swung his legs from the bed, reaching his free hand up to absently pull the needle from his arm, all the while never breaking gaze from the metal mask of the intruder. He rose smoothly to his feet, walking forward with firm, slow strides, the glowing tip of the tube in his hand unwavering.

The mute Santa froze for a moment and then started to back away. As soon as his retreating footsteps crossed the threshold of the room, Chase leaped forward, slamming the door shut in its metal face.

Foreman let out a breath of relief but House growled in annoyance. "Well, that was rude. This was just getting interesting." Before anyone could protest he limped forward and flung open the door again. Foreman saw Chase cringe back but instead of the threatening figure they were all expecting they were greeted by a bare corridor, empty except for a discarded metal mask, slowly rocking to a halt on the floor.

"What?" House exploded, peering out down the deserted corridor. "Where the hell..."

His attention was distracted as the bone vibrating whine that had permeated the room abruptly fell silent. All eyes fell on the Doctor, whose expression of threatening gravity fell away like a mask as he hiked a cheerful grin into place.

"Oh don't worry" he called out cheerily. "I'm sure they'll be back and then I'd be happy to introduce you."

He transferred the tube to his free hand and thrust out his right in an open palmed gesture, seemingly oblivious to the rivulets of blood that oozed down his forearm. "Hello!" he beamed. "I'm the Doctor. Nice to finally meet you, Dr House!"


	12. Chapter 12

**Authors note: **Sorry for the delay, had a really fun time over my birthday. I was taken to see "Waiting for Godot" at the theatre, starring the incomparable Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan. I laughed, I cried, I peed my pants in excitement! I'm still basking in the reflected greatness. Feel free to expire from jealousy now!! Thanks for all the lovely birthday reviews.

I'm afraid that I'm off to Portugal for a week now but I'm taking my laptop with me so hopefully there'll be an update on my return.

By the way, I have shamefully adapted the two brain function tests from a certain TV drama and film. Cookies for anyone who recognizes where either is from!

* * *

**Chapter 12**

**Evaluation**

House ignored the outstretched hand, scanning the grinning face of the man in front of him for the signs of dizziness or discomfort that he would expect after such an abrupt return to consciousness.

"_The_ Doctor, huh?" he drawled, heavy emphasis on the first word and watched as, defying all probability, the grin stretched even wider.

"Oh absolutely! The one and only; definite article." The doctor kept his hand outstretched expectantly. House continued to ignore it but met the intense brown gaze with a raised eyebrow.

"I love the egotism of your sobriquet so much that I demand henceforth that my minions address me as such. I believe that I am more worthy of it than you anyway, since I have never heard of you before Mr. John Smith" his voice still dripped with sarcasm as he spat out the name "Whilst apparently my fame extends to the British Isles."

The Doctor finally dropped his hand with a shrug. "Nope! Sorry to burst your bubble but I'd never heard of you before I was dragged into this charming death trap. Something I'd specifically wanted to avoid. That reminds me..." He broke eye contact with House, glancing around until he spotted Rose still kneeling by the bed, her face frozen in an expression of uncertain longing.

"Are you ever going to start doing what I tell you to?" he asked turning to face her and watching intently as she drew herself to her feet and searched his face with hungry eyes for several long silent moments.

"Probably not!" she quirked out eventually, a small hopeful grin lighting up her eyes.

The Doctor returned the grin, the questioning set to his long face melting under a wave of relief at the unspoken communication. "Good!" he winked at her. "Keeps things interesting!" He broke the intense gaze to glance around the room, bathing the others present in the intensity of his beaming smile. "Turns out my infamous luck's still holding as, instead of killing me as I'd have expected, Dr House's rather medieval approach to medicine was just what the Doctor ordered, although I'm rather glad I woke up before he broke out the leeches."

He cocked his head to one side as if listening to something then brought a fist up in a startlingly sudden gesture to slam it into the left side of his chest, droplets of blood from the puncture in his forearm splattering the open flap of his paper gown. He closed his eyes, his face relaxed into an expression of bliss, and let out a satisfied sigh. "Aaaah! That's better" he breathed. "Honestly, I don't know how you lot can survive with just..." He cut off abruptly, his eyes snapping open and flashing the grin around the room once more.

"I'm so sorry. I'm being rude. I should be thanking all you nice people for giving up your Christmas to try to help me." The grin fell away as the Doctor's gaze fell on the blood bag lying on the bed then back up at House, his eyes darkening almost to black as he continued in a quiet voice of velvet covered steel. "Although I will be wanting to reclaim all the blood and CSF samples that you took. Trust me, you're not ready to know."

House met the dark gaze without blinking, narrowing his eyes in thought. A muscle twitched in his stubbled cheek but before he could respond, Chase broke through the standoff with a slightly hysterical shout.

"Isn't anybody concerned about the psychos running round the hospital trying to set us on fire? Who the hell were those guys?"

The Doctor spun to face him, bringing the object in his hand up to his lips to blow on the end like a gunfighter, then talking cheerfully as he made the cylindrical object dance over his knuckles like a cheerleader's baton. "Oh I wouldn't worry about them, Dr Chase!" he called out brightly. "Purely small time mercenaries, probably gone back for further instructions. Think of them as the flying monkeys in Dr House's little Wizard of Oz metaphor."

"How did you know about that? Or our names for that matter?" House's voice cracked out with the force of a gunshot.

The Doctor turned back to face him, the grin softening to a sympathetic smile. "Just because I was unconscious doesn't mean I wasn't aware." He murmured softly, watching House's face intently.

House narrowed his eyes again, and there was silence for a few moments. "You were faking it, or possibly experiencing fluctuating boughts of lucidity" he ground out in a tone of finality.

Something almost like disappointment flashed across the Doctor's face before being wiped away by the returning grin. "Some would say that describes my whole existence!" he responded cheerfully before adding as an afterthought "By the way, good evil cackle, although you need to project more from the diaphragm." He erupted suddenly into an earsplitting shriek of maniacal laughter that sent Cameron stepping back in alarm. "See? I don't get to do that half as much as I'd like."

Foreman started towards the door in determination. "I'm calling for a psych consult." He announced "The guy's clearly insane!"

The Doctor shrugged and continued without pause "Because that's the reaction I normally get!"

House almost absent mindedly blocked Foreman's path with his cane, muttering impatiently "Oh pipe down. I hardly think he's likely to attack us with his torch."

"Doctor?" Everyone's attention was drawn back to where Rose still hovered by the empty bed. She continued haltingly. "Are you okay though? Really? You're not going to ... change again?"

The Doctor smiled softly at her. "I'm not going anywhere, not for a while." He glanced down at the dark streaks on his arm, running a finger through the viscous liquid and raised it to his mouth, sucking on it with a thoughtful expression. "Still a little short on oxalic and phytic acids but nothing that a bit of rest and a nice cup of tea won't cure."

House snorted. "You British and your tea!" he sneered. "Did you know that even as late as the Korean war, British medics gave soldiers with gut wounds a nice cup of tea to drink, usually resulting in post surgery infection caused by the diffused anaerobic bacteria."

The Doctor's smile slipped, leaving his face shadowed and hollow. "Actually yes, I did know that" he muttered, flicking a glare at House. "Turns out medical men have a tendency to be annoyingly stubborn and to fail to listen to reason." The shadows passed as the grin beamed out again. "But luckily I don't happen to have a perforated gut and I do need the hydrolyzable tannins and superoxides to reduce the bioavailability of metal ions in my blood. And I'm not British, I just seem to have picked up the accent somewhere along the way."

He glanced around rapidly then suddenly cried out in delight and lunged towards the bed, snatching up the discarded leather jacket from the crumpled heap where Foreman had left it. "What do you think?" he asked Rose seriously, shrugging the over-large jacket on and pulling it closed over his bared chest. "I'm not sure it quite goes with the paper gown, although the flowers are a nice touch." He glanced down sadly. "It's the knees. I never get good looking knees, although I did win a contest with them once."

He glanced around at Cameron with a wink. "I think it would be better for all concerned if you could show me where you've hidden my trousers, then I can be out of your hair and you can get back to enjoying your Christmas without further disruption."

"Disruption!" Chase spluttered in disbelief. "We nearly got flash fried by a psychotic Santa. Christmas may never be the same again."

The Doctor walked over to him and put a consoling hand on his shoulder, gazing meaningfully down at the shorter man. "Don't worry, that wasn't the real Father Christmas." He spoke in a sincere tone. "I should know, I was once sent to arrest the man for extreme time violations." His earnest expression was cracked by yet another grin. "I let him off with a warning actually. A man after my own hearts!"

Whilst Chase gaped in open mouthed confusion, Foreman threw up his hands in frustration. "Oh come on House, the man's claiming to be close friends with an irrational fictional character and you don't think that it's time we called for the psychiatric orderlies?"

House stared at him deadpan whilst asking in a shocked voice "Are you telling me you don't believe in Santa?" He watched as Foreman's hands curled into fists at his sides as he glared at House in a most un-amused fashion. "I'm worried by this hostility you show towards good old Saint Nick." House schooled his features into a look of mock concern. "Do you have bad memories from when you were young of a fat bearded man coming into your bedroom to empty his sack?"

House snapped his gaze from Foreman's outrage to look back to the Doctor's carefully schooled mask of disapproval. "Despite Foreman's childhood traumas, he does make a good point. You've had diminished heart and respiration rates and periods of altered consciousness and are currently exhibiting sudden mood changes, hyperactivity and delusions. It's possible that the heavy metal poisoning has led to some mental retardation."

The Doctor drew himself stiffly erect a look of deep affront crossing his face but it was Rose who answered, peering around the Doctor to grin at House. "Oh don't worry, he's always like this. You kind of get used to it!" she assured him.

The Doctor grinned at her. "Thanks!" the grin swiftly fell away to be replaced by a suspicious frown. "I think" he muttered, then switched his grin back to House. "As fun as it would be to match wits with you all day, Doctor, and convince you of my supergenius intellect, I'm afraid we really should be going before we get any more unexpected visits."

He stepped forward and blinked in surprise as the end of House's cane shot up to land squarely on his chest. House pushed, forcing the Doctor to step backwards until the bed hit the back of his knees and he sat down suddenly.

"You're not going anywhere until we've thoroughly checked you out." House announced implacably. "Normally I approve of the trait of bloody mindedness but not when it might actually lead to a bloody mind."

The Doctor stared at him for a moment then grinned and swung his legs up to sit cross legged on the low bed. "I suppose I have time for a couple of controlled oral word association tests, they're always fun!"

"Fine. Name me ten things beginning with a 'P'" House barked out.

The Doctor didn't seem to pause for breath before reeling off a string of syllables. "Pester, perturb, provoke, poor, patient, patience, psychology, pneumonia, phantom, day."

There was a pause whilst House stared at him, stone-faced, but it was Foreman who provided the straight-line.

"Day doesn't start with a 'P'." The Doctor turned his grin on him.

"I should get that checked out if I were you; it could be a kidney problem."

House called his attention back with a sharp rap of his cane on the Doctor's bare knee. "Name as many mammals as you can in thirty seconds. Chase, time him." He called out shortly.

The Doctor cocked his head at him, with an appraising look. "I assume you mean currently non-extinct Earth mammals" he muttered, absently rubbing his knee. "Well, alphabetically that would include the aardvark, anteater, antelope, ape, armadillo, baboon, badger, bat, bear, beaver, bison, buffalo .."

House blinked as the words washed over him, increasing in speed until the clipped syllables almost ran together, without pause for breath.

"Wallabywalruswarthogwhalewolfwombatyakzebrazebu!"

The Doctor finished with a flourish a moment before Chase called out a weak "Time!"

There was a moment's stunned pause whilst five sets of lungs inflated in subconscious empathy, before Rose let out a snort. "Showoff!" she muttered, coming to sit beside the Doctor on the bed, bumping his shoulder affectionately with her own.

House merely raised an eyebrow. "I'll admit that was slightly better than 'baby elephant' which was all I got the last time I administered that test."

The Doctor winced. "Damn! Missed that one" he exclaimed with a look of deep chagrin.

House shook out the stethoscope from where he still had it clutched in his free hand, flicking the earpieces around his neck with a practiced motion. "Open your jacket, I want to listen to your heart." He commanded in a no-nonsense tone.

A look of alarm flashed over the Doctor's expressive face and he swung his legs down off the bed, leaning back to partially shield himself behind Rose's body.

"Oh, I don't think that's nec ... Hey, is that my stethoscope?"

Suddenly, almost like a dramatic punctuation of the Doctor's indignant cry, the door slammed open once again, causing everyone in the room to jump either in surprise or alarm.

House spun on his good leg to see a rather flushed Wilson hesitate in the doorway, glancing round in surprise at the overcrowded room.

"There you are! I've been looking everywhere for you." He paused in his rushed delivery to raise an eyebrow at the tableau of House, looming threateningly over a man in a blood spotted, flowery gown and leather jacket.

"You're having a party without me?" he asked in a mock-hurt tone.

House glared at him impatiently. "Congratulations. You found us. Now it's your turn to go and hide" he announced dismissively, turning back to his patient.

Wilson didn't move, merely settling back against the doorframe, his face alight with a mischievous mix of excitement and anticipation. "I take it you've been too busy with your latest scheme to watch the news tonight." He commented with a nod towards the small television mounted on a high bracket in one corner of the little room.

Chase groaned. "Oh god, this insanity's been picked up by the local news. We're going to get fired for sure."

House's attention had been thoroughly diverted from the patient before him by Wilson's air of childish glee as he grinned at Chase.

"Well go on then, tell us! You're practically bursting with your earth-shattering news" he snapped.

Wilson let out a short bark of laughter. "Oh how prophetic!" he announced in a portentous tone. "This could well be the end of the world as we know it!" he intoned with heavy melodrama, raising both eyebrows as he proclaimed "For we are being invaded by aliens!"


	13. Chapter 13

**Authors note: **Sorry for the delay in the update, had a lovely holiday although it appeared to result in a bad case of writers block! I apologize for the shortness of this chapter, I thought it best to whack something out to try to get myself back into the groove. Nearing the end of the ride now, if I could beat this affliction then I might actually finally finish a project (shock horror!).

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Offensive**

House stared at his friend's smirk in irritation, his fingers tightening on the old cracked rubber of the stethoscope clenched in one hand. His mind vacillated, as if pulled in different directions. Towards the spark of devilment that danced in Wilson's brown eyes, unconcealed for once by the usual straight jacket of starched propriety. Towards also his suddenly intriguingly conscious patient and that hint of alarm that had flashed in his eyes at House's approach.

The moment of standoff was broken as the girl, Rose, let out a snort of strained amusement. "Ok, now I _know _that nothing's changed. Honestly, can't we at least have the weekend off before being thrown back into it?"

The Doctor smiled, but there was a tightness around his eyes as he shrugged. "Ah well, you know what they say. No rest for the wicked!"

Rose's eyes drew together and she reached a hand out towards him but the Doctor whirled away from her and sprang up from the bed to fix an intent gaze on a startled Wilson.

"I'm so sorry, we've not been introduced." He leaned forward and seized Wilson's hand, pumping it furiously as the other man stared at him with a bemused grin. "I'm the Doctor. Welcome to the party!" he exclaimed with a grin and a birdlike cock of his head towards the befuddled group of people arrayed behind him.

Wilson looked him up and down appraisingly and then politely extracted his hand from the energetic grip, looking over at House with a raised eyebrow. He nodded towards where Rose still sat sprawled on the bed. "I see you managed to catch more than just your blonde!" he commented wryly.

House scowled without looking at him, his eyes still locked on the Doctor as he flexed the stethoscope impatiently. "I thought you were too busy to play" he muttered dismissively.

Wilson flung both hands into the air with dramatic enthusiasm. "Who can work when the news is full of stories of monsters from Mars hijacking satellite signals."

House finally fixed his attention on his friend and frowned across at his flushed features. "Have you been on the Christmas booze?" he snapped.

Wilson grinned. "Not yet!" he winked. "But I plan to raise a glass to whatever genius managed to pull this off at the very first opportunity!"

"And speaking of..." The Doctor chimed in brightly. "Why are we all just standing here. Come on the, let the dog see the rabbit!" he looked back over his shoulder to flash a cheeky wink at House whilst fiddling with the cylinder he still had clutched in one hand.

House quirked an eyebrow at him, opening his mouth for a caustic comment about the man's obsession with his tool, but was cut short as the television in the corner of the room fizzled to life in a blaze of static.

The picture condensed into the glossy features of an attractively polished news anchor, her face carefully sculpted into a grave expression of concern. A picture behind her flickered through a looped two second reel of film on which a shadowed visage glowered down at her with predatory threat whilst she maintained her serious tone, elaborating on the banner of text unrolling beneath her.

"Once again, these shocking images were broadcast live tonight. Five hours ago the British space probe Guinevere One transmitted, not the images of the surface of Mars as had been expected, but possible evidence of the existence of alien life."

"That is so cool! I always knew this would happen one day!"

House made a cynical noise in the back of his throat. "Give me strength!" he muttered, shaking his head at Chase's rapt expression as the younger doctor stared almost reverently up at the screen.

"It is rather impressive, though, you have to admit." Wilson whispered to him sotto voice, grinning as he jerked his head towards the television. "Almost Donnie Darko in derivation. I'd give it an eight out of ten for style."

House froze his enthusiasm with a glacial glare. "Oh please!" he spat, looking back up at the elongated shadowed angles and bony ridges of the fearsome mask. "I played more convincing hoaxes with a sheep's skull back when I was an intern. This is completely lacking in any originality."

"Oh yes, that's the Sycorax for you!" The Doctor called back to him cheerfully. "All bravado and melodrama. They can be accused of many things but originality wouldn't be one of them."

There was a moment of silence as six pairs of eyes blinked at him, then Foreman exploded with a rather strangled exclamation of "What?!"

The Doctor glanced back at him but was distracted from any response by a change of background image on the television above him.

"Whilst both the US and United Kingdom Governments have issued statements that these transmissions are the result of a hoax, sources close to the British Prime Minister suggest that she has been locked in secret discussions with the military and other world leaders since being rushed to a secure location earlier this evening" the newsreader continued, whilst behind her the screen showed shaky footage of a long faced, smartly dressed woman being bustled through the heavy, dungeon-like doors of a grim looking fortress.

"Hey! I know her!" Rose called out in an animated tone.

"Harriet Jones! MP for Flydale North" the Doctor blurted in high pitched glee. "Oooh, isn't she doing well for herself?!"

House raised an eyebrow at the Doctor's pleased croon. "You're close personal friends with the Prime Minister of Great Britain?" he asked in a deadpan monotone.

The Doctor turned to face him. "Oh, we shared a moment in a previous incarnation" he drawled mildly.

House narrowed his eyes at the other man's mischievous smirk. "I'd watch what you say if I were you, Foreman's just itching to call out for the little men in white coats."

The Doctor's smirk remained fixed as he tossed his head imperiously. "Oh I think I could pull off a straight-jacket, it's all about self confidence" he mused, brushing an imaginary piece of lint from the hem of his floral print paper gown. "Of course, I'd prefer for you to return my confiscated trousers. I mean call me old fashioned but even I might find saving the world in a nightie a tad embarrassing!"

Wilson's eyebrows crept up into his hairline as he flicked his eyes between the two antagonists. "House, I can't believe how many times I've had to ask you this question, but why have you stolen this man's pants?"

House scowled, his accusing glare unwavering from the man in front of him. "Well, I would say that I was hoping for a big reveal but we tried that and I still haven't managed to uncover his secret."

The Doctor winked at him. "Trust me, it's a big one. You couldn't handle it." A look of dismay flashed across his face, dissolving the grin into a grimace of distaste. "Oh goodness, I think I may have been spending too much time around Captain Jack" he muttered, then went suddenly still, his face draining of all emotion as Rose caught her breath in a little gasp.

"Jack! Shouldn't we go back for him?"

He turned to her slowly, not quite meeting her eyes as he gave a tiny shake of his head.

House eyed them both thoughtfully as Rose hesitated for a moment, then gave a soft sob and threw herself forward off the bed to bury her face in the Doctor's chest. He curled a protective arm around her shoulders, his own slumping as if under a heavy weight. For a moment the room was cloaked under a heavy blanket of stillness. Then the doctor shrugged his shoulders and straightened his spine in an abrupt gesture, pulling Rose's body close to him in a brief hug.

"Come on, we've got a big bad alien plot to thwart. Just like old times!" he coaxed, then suddenly cocked his head to one side. "Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed anything odd here?"

Wilson snorted. "You mean other than the fact that someone's managed to perpetrate a worldwide hoax by building an alien that you've chosen to name?"

House leered over at where the Doctor's arm still rested over Rose's shoulder. "I was thinking that it was that a supposedly heterosexual man just overlooked the perfect opportunity to cop a feel of an ass like that."

The Doctor frowned disapprovingly at him before letting his intent brown gaze flicker around the room. "Actually, I was thinking that whilst I can understand Foreman's nervous irritation and Chase's rather endearing excitement, I was wondering why Dr Cameron seems to be in a little world of her own."

All eyes in the room snapped to the statuesque brunette, who stood with her arms hanging limply by her sides, her dark, smoky gaze pinned fixedly on an empty patch of air.

Chase, who was closest to her, screwed up his forehead as he stared at his colleague. "Cameron?!" he called uncertainly; placing a tentative hand on her shoulder, then giving her a little shake when she didn't respond. He jumped back with a yelp, snatching his hand to his chest protectively as a nimbus of blue light coruscated up in a flickering wave of sparks that flowed up over Cameron's head before dispersing up into the room. "What the ...?"

The Doctor gently pushed Rose behind him as he walked forward to stand in front of the oblivious young woman. "Doctor Cameron?" he spoke softly, as you would to a startled animal. He held his hand up to her face, holding it steady as another wave of blue flame washed up over her head, streaming around his fingers like the flow of a reverse waterfall. Once again, the light diffused out into nothingness and the Doctor withdrew his fingers, rubbing them together absently, as if to restore sensation. He made a little humming noise, his face distracted, then blinked and stepped back in surprise as Dr Cameron suddenly jerked painfully erect, as if someone had pulled on her strings.

She swivelled on the spot then strode purposefully towards the door, eyes still fixed in that thousand yard stare.

"What the hell!" Wilson yelped as Cameron barged roughly past him in the narrow doorway, slamming her white lab coat-clad shoulder into his chest until he stumbled back out of her way. "Cameron? What's going on here?" he called in alarm.

There was a scramble of movement as the occupants of the room piled out into the corridor, watching the retreating back of the stiffly marching woman as she stalked down the corridor. There was a moment of silence broken only by a faint crackle of another surge of light shimmering over Cameron's head.

House leaned his weight against the door, letting his eyes drift speculatively over where the Doctor stood with Rose's hand tightly grasped in his, and on to where his immunologist was awkwardly stumbling away from them.

"Interesting!" he drawled softly yet quite emphatically, firmly ignoring the shocked glares that he drew with his dispassionate statement.


	14. Chapter 14

**Authors note: **Okay so the writers block is putting up more of a battle than I'd expected, especially as it's collaborating with a massive workload and a slowly developing social life! Please bear with me though, I am determined to finish both this and my other story, even if it kills me! I have other ideas for stories (usually crossovers since I love them so much!) but will keep them bottled up until I've found a conclusion! Cookies for anyone who can spot the random extra crossovers?! P.S. If I ever get details wrong, please tell me!

**Chapter Fourteen**

**On the brink**

The Doctor paused, one hand braced against the door frame of the emergency stairwell, staring up at the dim winding steps. His breath came in slightly uneven gasps. Rose felt the resistance tug on their clasped hands and pulled herself out of her headlong dash to look back at the stranger that she was just about accepting again as her center of being. The green emergency lights from inside the stairwell cast strange, flickering shadows over the hard lines and sharp angles of his face, making him seem more alien to her. She glanced at the dark, burnt-coffee coloured eyes, feeling her stomach clench in a sudden spasm of uncertainty and longing for the previous crystal clarity of the oh so familiar sky-blue gaze.

The Doctor's lips pulled into a tight smile at her hesitation and Rose felt him squeeze her hand in reassurance. Rose waited for the rush of warmth that always infused her body at that simple gesture, but it didn't arrive. There was still that stubborn aching emptiness at the base of her throat, less painful since the Doctor had opened his eyes again but not quite gone yet. She shivered as this sensation was joined by creeping goose flesh up the nape of her neck as the shuffling sound of numerous zombie-like footsteps and laboured breathing echoed down from the staircase above them.

"Are you... are you okay?" her voice was soft, hesitant.

"'Course I'm okay!" The Doctor's strained features flashed into a brilliant grin and Rose felt that tight pain in her chest ease a little as she returned the toothy smile.

The Doctor glanced back as a clatter of footsteps rounded the corner of the corridor.

"Hey up! Here come the slow-coaches!" he drawled as Foreman and Chase pulled up behind them. The Doctor released Rose's hand in order to clap a palm over Chase's shoulder as the young man braced his hands on his knees and struggled to catch his breath.

"If you want to get involved then do at least _try_ to keep up, or we'll loose her!" He peered impatiently down the corridor for a second then grimaced in contrition. "Oh, I guess it would be a bit hard for Dr House to go haring off after trouble." He grinned. "Probably why he seems to take so much delight in making trouble come to him." He arched an eyebrow at Foreman, whose breathing had evened out a little more quickly. "Did Dr Wilson choose to stay by his side then?" he asked in an interested tone.

Foreman gave a curt nod then jumped slightly as the echoing bang of a slamming door cracked down from above them. He grimaced in frustration.

"So, Dr. Smith, are you going to explain what you think is going on here?" he demanded.

The Doctor grinned at him, even going so far as to slip him a quick wink. "Nope!" he chirped cheerfully. "A) because I'm not completely sure yet." He cocked a shoulder in a self-depreciating shrug. "I'm never at my best when I've just woken up. It's why I try to avoid going to sleep unless it's strictly necessary." He paused for a moment, his eyes looking slightly out of focus, and then gave his head a little toss, as if shaking loose cobwebs, before continuing brightly "and, um, 2) I think that you're the sort who would never believe me anyway."

He reached out and seized Rose's hand tightly again, using it to pull himself away from the wall. "Right then" he beamed at her, gesturing with his other hand up the dark staircase with a courtly motion. "Alonsi!"

* * *

Dr Lisa Cuddy wrapped her hands around the collar-bone of her new surgeon and used all her weight to shake him slightly towards her. "Doctor Mickhead!" She called loudly, leaning close to try to make eye contact with his fixed gaze. She gritted her teeth in frustration, practically screaming directly into his ear. "WALTER! Snap out of it!"

The tall, dark haired doctor didn't even flinch at the shrill noise and Dr Cuddy slumped, releasing her grip on his shoulders. She bit her lip and stumbled back as the white-coated figure pushed past her to resume his previous stumbling progress across the flat, concrete roof-top.

Lisa let her gaze drift over the wall of humanity arrayed around her. Her frantic eyes flicked over the continuous line of backs, some clad in lab-coats and some in hospital scrubs, standing shoulder to shoulder; or shoulder to hip in the case of one little five-year old girl. All of them were balanced on the soles of their feet on the six-inch high retaining wall around the very edge of the building. She'd spent the last ten minutes in mindless panic, pleading with and pulling colleagues and strangers alike away from the edge, whilst trying not to let her eyes linger too long on the sucking thirteen story drop to the unforgiving concrete below.

She raised her hands to her temples, clenching her fingers in the shining brown curls of her hair, loosening it still further from its previous neat French pleat. "Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on here?" she shouted huskily to the heavy blanket of clouds above.

"Ooh that sounds like my cue! Glad I got here in time, would have been terrible to waste a straight-line like that!"

Cuddy whirled to see an explosion of figures spew forth from the emergency stair-well behind her. In the lead was a familiar straight-backed, slim frame and Cuddy let out a groan as her eyes slipped away from another fixed, thousand-yard stare. "Oh Alison, not you too!" she moaned, then snapped a bone-chilling glare at the four figures still hovering just outside the doorway.

Cuddy stepped to one side as Dr Cameron shambled past her to push her way into the precarious line of poised figures, then stalked forward. She ignored the scruffy looking blonde girl and the wild-haired patient in the leather jacket and focused all of her attention on a shifty looking Chase and Foreman.

"Please tell me that this is not somehow the fault of Doctor House." Her voice grated out with exaggerated calm.

The two doctors stared at her in helpless bewilderment, whilst that same cheerful voice from a moment before washed over her, eroding some of her iron control.

"Oh I doubt you could blame this on Dr House, despite his new-found ability for annoying aliens!"

Cuddy turned and flicked her gaze down across the eccentrically dressed wiry man who stood beside her. She noted how he seemed unable to stand still, shifting his shoulders constantly within the over sized jacket and rocking forward onto the balls of his bare feet. She blinked at these for a moment, staring at the slightly hairy toes before looking back up into seemingly bottomless eyes. She felt herself becoming a little dizzy from trading stares with that dark gaze, and gave herself a mental shake, drawing herself back to the present and pasting a professional smile in place.

"I feel I need to apologise for the disruption Mr..." she paused in polite invitation.

"Oh, just call me the Doctor, everyone does, and don't worry about the disruption, disruption is my middle name!" He beamed at her, sticking a hand out for her to shake. He didn't seem to notice when she made no move to take it, instead continuing in a rather distracted tone "Well, actually it isn't of course. My middle name is pretty awful actually. Even worse than my first name which I suppose is one of the reasons that I never use it. Still I guess you realised that I wasn't being literal. I mean what parents would actually name their child disruption, or the more traditionally clichéd trouble? Although now I come to think about it, that would actually be a fantastic name. You could call out 'Ay 'up! Here comes Trouble' without getting told off for being mean about someone's family members" He paused to take a breath, his eyes flicking over the stunned faces of the people around him until he hit upon Rose's amused grin. "And it seems like this new version of myself has quite a gob on it. Bit prone to babbling. You're going to need to stop me when I do that!"

Rose's grin widened and she said simply "I like it when you do that!" There was a moment of private warmth on the cold rooftop as the two held each others' gazes. Dr Cuddy broke it with a small cough. "I don't mean to be rude .. um, Doctor, but this isn't the best place..." she broke off, trying to hide her skepticism beneath a polite charade whilst jerking her head significantly from Foreman towards the pair.

"You're right, of course. I should have been in the UK. That's where the spaceship will be heading. They always do. Drawn towards the rift usually. Don't know why the TARDIS thought it best to bring me here but she usually has her reasons, bless her heart." He commented, with a quick wink towards Rose.

He dropped his hand from where he still had it outstretched and strode forward across the roof. He seemed oblivious to the cold breeze that set the knee length hospital gown fluttering around his thighs as he hopped up onto the wall, shouldering his way into the line of statues.

"So, what have we got here?" he mused. He fumbled a hand into one pocket of the jacket he wore and came out with a pair of thick-framed, square-cut glasses. He perched these on the tip on his nose before leaning sideways out over the edge of the building to get a good look at an elderly female patient who stared out into the oncoming dawn. He poked his index finger into her ear and wiggled it about a bit, causing not the slightest reaction to cross the wrinkled face. He sniffed at his finger, grimaced and then wiped it on the blood-flecked flap of his paper gown.

"Not any sort of device controlling them." He glanced back, in quick disapproval at the group of figures staring at him from the center of the roof "Although with all the satellites and data you lot have now got zipping around the sub-ether, it's only a matter of time before some evil genius decides to use your addiction to your mobile phones to turn you all into mindless zombies." He jumped down from the wall, flashing a cheeky grin over at Rose as he folded the glasses back into his pocket. "Although I'm not sure how many would notice. You should hear her when she gets going to her mum!"

"Oy, watch it!" came the strident objection, although there was a bubbling chuckle beneath the cockney protest.

The Doctor continued regardless. "So, if it's not new technology, maybe it's something older." He looked down at the stains on his gown then absently stuck his index finger into his mouth, frowning distractedly as if savouring a complex flavour.

"Does anyone know what blood group Dr Cameron is?" He called out, jogging over to them.

"Um, I think she's A positive!" Chase muttered, his voice a little hesitant and his face blank with shell-shock.

Rose grinned at him and nudged him in the ribs with her elbow, causing him to stumble and blink down at her. "Interesting that you seem to have her medical details memorised!" she muttered to him, sotto voce.

He blinked at her and a high spot of colour appeared on each cheekbone. "What? She's a colleague! I thought it would be useful to know..." he spluttered to a halt and Rose snorted at him, her smirk widening.

"Of course!" she crooned, soothingly. "And I bet you could tell me all sorts of stuff about your friend Dr Foreman here too!"

The Doctor came over to stand beside her, giving her a quelling glance, although his lips twitched slightly as he tried to fix them into a firm line.

"The important fact being, I should imagine, that Dr Foreman here _isn't _blood group A positive. Am I right?" he asked mildly.

Foreman hesitated for a moment and then nodded, confirming "B negative" in a thoughtful voice.

The Doctor whirled to face Cuddy, who actually found herself swaying back from the intensity of his regard. "Dr Cuddy, am I right? You're the person in charge of this place. And unless I miss my guess you are the sort to care enough about the staff in your employ and the patients under your care to know the blood groups of at least some of these people."

Cuddy blinked, her mind still racing, the whole experience having taken on an abstracted, surreal quality as she found herself responding almost without conscious volition. "I know that that little boy over there, Billy Palmer, is A positive. He was transferred in earlier tonight with severe trauma that's led to an unresponsive state, although that doesn't seem to have stopped him walking up here." She looked around a little wildly. "And that's Nan Flanagan, a member of the board who I was talking to just this afternoon. We had an interesting chat about blood donation and the advances being made in Japan in synthetics. She mentioned she was A positive."

The Doctor quirked a grin at her, whilst laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "I'm starting to see a pattern here" he muttered, turning away to walk along the line of balanced figures. Suddenly he spun to face his audience, throwing both hands in the air in a dramatic gesture. "Blood control!" he blurted. " No! Really? I mean honestly, I know that the Sycorax are prone to more cheese than a 70's nightclub but trying to take over a planet by threatening mass suicide based on blood control? That's just pathetic!"

Rose strode over to him and tapped him politely on the shoulder, breaking through his reverie. "Gloating over how much more clever you are than your adversaries is making you seem a bit too super villain!" she commented mildly.

A look of mortal affront flashed over the Doctor's mobile features. "Super-villain? But surely I'm far more suited to the role of super hero" he pouted, giving her a little-boy's frown of chagrin. The mock sulk melted away under another 1000 watt beaming smile as he quickly slipped out of the leather jacket and tied the sleeves together under his chin. "See, I have a cloak and everything!" He turned as if modeling a new fashion design. "What do you think, could this be my new look? It's still less eccentric than I used to dress. No hint of a decorative vegetable!"

Rose giggled and gave him an excited grin. "The TARDIS is just downstairs. What do you think, 'to the Doctor-mobile and away'?!"

The Doctor cocked his head at her thoughtfully. "I suppose I could go and do the hero thing, challenge their leader to a duel or something." He rolled his eyes. "The Sycorax are big on duels. Not the subtlest of people."

The Doctor's eyes drifted away from Rose and lighted on Dr Cuddy. "But since I find myself in a well equipped hospital, I wonder if there might be a more elegant first step to solving this one" he mused.

Cuddy blinked at him in surprise as he addressed her with an old fashioned bow, causing the jacket still knotted around his neck to flap back in the breeze.

"Dr Cuddy, I am pleased to inform you that I believe that, with a little help from my able assistants here," at this he flung out each hand, one towards Rose who stepped out of the way with an amused grin, and the other towards where Chase and Foreman still stood frozen in place, "I should be able to reverse the problems that afflict your hospital. In order to achieve this, I shall need just one small thing from you."

Lisa narrowed her eyes at him, still trying to get a handle on the bizarre situation and the even more fantastic figure in front of her. The silence lengthened, thickening with suspicion. Finally she heard her voice croak out, sounding quite unlike her usual measured tones.

"And that would be?"

The Doctor turned limpid eyes on her, his face falling into wistful, puppy-dog appeal. "Could somebody _please _fetch me a cup of tea first?"


	15. Chapter 15

**Authors note: **I know. I've fallen off the update wagon. I have sinned. It has been four months since my last update. Maybe there are still some loyal readers out there who are willing to forgive me my transgressions. I was severely provoked by overwork, but I know that is no real excuse (especially to all those who so politely asked me to get my but into gear!). If anyone still cares, I am planning on wrapping this up and getting back to my other story within the next couple of weeks.

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Bloody hell!**

Wilson shrugged his broad shoulders restlessly as he leaned one hip against the brushed steel of the lab doorway. He upped the intensity of his scowl, trying through force of will to punch his glare through the obliviously hunched back before him.

"House, will you please answer me!" he bit off tersely. He actually considered for a second stamping his foot in impatient irritation when his friend didn't shift one iota, keeping his attention firmly fixed on the microscope before him. He managed to bite down on the childish impulse but couldn't stop the hiss of annoyance from forcing its way from between clenched teeth.

"You know if I'd wanted to talk to a cold shoulder all night I could have arranged to spend Christmas with my ex-wife." He murmured, mainly to himself, but was cheered when House let out a soft snort. That was the only indication that the other man had given within the last five minutes that he was even aware of his presence. He'd studiously been ignoring all of Wilson's demands for an explanation for the weird scene in the hospital room earlier.

"Oh, so are you acknowledging me now?" he demanded querulously. He scowled, hearing the rather sulky tone that had crept into his voice. He cleared his throat gruffly, trying for a lighter note for his next sentence. He knew from experience that exposing hurt feelings to House was like exposing your throat to a vampire.

"You know, I was expecting that you might have a more interesting take on this evening's events. If I'd have known that you would pick tonight of all nights to become a lab geek, I'd have stuck with Cameron and her followers. Maybe then I could have had a chance at figuring out what's going on here."

House waved a dismissive hand over one shoulder. "Cheap parlour tricks!" House drawled, keeping his head bowed over the eyepiece of the machine before him. "It looked impressive; I'll grant you but nothing a good stage magician and hypnotist couldn't whip up."

He spun suddenly on his chair, causing Wilson to start under the unexpected intensity of his friend's piercing gaze. The younger oncologist blinked at his friend as House flung an emphatic hand out to indicate the bench beside him, densely cluttered with smear slides and blood filled test-tubes. "And don't you think that the timing of all of this is just a little coincidental? When I was _this_ close to figuring out what this guy was hiding!"

Wilson gaped at him for a moment, his eyes flicking between the sparkle in his friend's blue eyes and the thumb and forefinger held poised before his face, as if ready to squash a bug.

"My god!" he exploded. "I mean I knew you were self-absorbed but are you really saying that this guy managed to stage an alien invasion just to throw you off his scent?!"

House regarded him impassively for a moment before calmly raising one eyebrow and pushing against the bench to roll his chair a foot away from the microscope. Wilson found himself pinned in place by the challenge in his friend's eyes as he gestured towards the instrument with a surprisingly polite gesture.

"Why don't you take a look at that blood sample" he grated out in an emotionless, flat tone "and then tell me that you're still confident that you can say what's possible."

* * *

The Doctor hung his head over the steaming polystyrene cup and inhaled deeply, his shoulders slumping as they released their muscle knotting tension. He let out an almost primal moan of pleasure that caused the watching Rose to shift uncomfortably and clear her throat in embarrassment. The Doctor ignored her, instead lifting the cup slowly to his lips to take a delicate sip. He rolled it round his mouth like a wine connoisseur assessing a puzzling vintage, before finally swallowing. A beatific smile spread across his face.

"Ah, tea!" he breathed reverently. "Sometimes I think that it's the only thing that keeps me coming back to continuously save your troublesome little world."

"Oi!" Rose let out indignantly. The Doctor just winked one sparkling brown eye at her and took another sip.

"And they say that American's can't make a decent cup of tea!" he muttered, and then grimaced as some unwelcome aftertaste assaulted his taste buds. "Well, they'd be right of course, but I suppose this is the next best thing."

He finally lowered the cup, leaning over to give the squat shape of the corridor vending machine a resigned pat of affection, as if praising a puppy that had just performed a rather pathetic trick. "Thank you for the change Dr. Chase." He acknowledged the blonde doctor before him with a toasting gesture of the cup in his hand. "I find myself a little strapped for cash at the moment" he went on, using his free hand to pat down the side of his pocket-less paper gown in illustration.

Rose snorted. "Like that's anything new! I'm always having to sub you.." she muttered mutinously, then grinned as the Doctor turned to her and solemnly presented her with the plastic cup as if delivering unto her the holiest of grails. She took it resignedly and watched as he pushed up the sleeves of the overlarge leather jacket, that once again flapped loosely over the stained and slightly torn floral hospital gown. He held his bared forearms up dramatically, like a surgeon preparing to start an operation, and tossed his head imperiously towards the bemused form of Dr Lisa Cuddy.

"Right then, now that I'm finally feeling fully awake we can get started, doctor!" he called brightly, then hesitated, turning to also acknowledge Chase and Foreman hovering to one side of the bright white corridor. "And doctor, and doctor!" he added with conciliatory courtesy, then paused. "You know if doctors House and Wilson ever turn up this could start to get really confusing." A small frown flitted across his face. "Where do you suppose those two have got to anyway? I didn't peg Gregory House for the type to abandon a mystery just when it's getting interesting."

He shook his head in quick dismissal. "Oh well, can't wait for them!" he spun to face Cuddy again, causing her to blink in surprise. "I intend to get started on a historical bit of histology!" He grinned at her encouragingly, throwing his arms wide in an expansive gesture. "I'm sure knowing this excellent hospital as well as you do, it should be no trouble for you to find me a blood analysis machine. I need to take some readings." He winked at her mischievously before intoning in mock seriousness "Come on; take me to your reader!"

* * *

James Wilson hadn't consciously been aware of collapsing backwards onto the lab stool House had positioned behind him. He just knew that suddenly his legs were reluctant to support him as he stared blankly into space, his mind a whirl.

"There's got to be some sort of mistake" he mumbled to no-one in particular and then shot his gaze around to pin House with a scowl. "If this is some sort of prank you're pulling, I swear you'll never taste my chocolate cannoli again."

House reared back as if he had just been threatened with extreme physical violence, one eyebrow hiked high towards his greying hairline. He opened his mouth, but whatever sarcastic retort James had been expecting never emerged as his friend paused, his head cocked ever so slightly to one side, and then pushed himself roughly to his feet with his cane. He lurched to the doorway, gripping the sill tightly with one hand as he leaned his head out the open door before looking back at Wilson.

"Hold that thought." He ordered in a perfunctory tone, his long face settling back into the inscrutable planes that had cost Wilson so much at poker over the years. "It looks like it's time for act two of this little drama."

Wilson heard the sound of rapid slapping footsteps echoing down the corridor, overlaid with a stream of consciousness type monologue of such rapid fire delivery that he couldn't actually make out anything other that an impression of cheerful urgency. He peered through the lab's glass wall to see a leather clad back hove into view around the bend in the corridor. House's eccentric patient was walking rapidly backwards towards them, his bare feet practically skipping over the floor tiles as he continued to expound to his bemused followers, accompanied by dramatic hand gestures.

Wilson made eye contact with a dishevelled Dr Cuddy, who shrugged at him in a rather dazed and helpless gesture. The young girl, Rose, gave them both a little wave and a cheerful grin over the other man's shoulder. In a sudden move, as if physically slapped out of his preoccupation by this gesture, the Doctor whirled around to face them both.

Everyone in the corridor froze as the Doctor rocked to a halt, his eyes flicking over House and the array of equipment and blood filled vials within the lab beyond. The tension sizzled as the two men locked gazes and Wilson found himself holding his breath in expectation of something momentous, although he hadn't sorted through the confused swirl of his thoughts in order to make an intelligent prediction of what that might be.

The Doctor heaved a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of a bone-tired soul. "I see." He muttered as if he'd been presented with a distasteful mess that he would be expected to clean up.

He stepped forward gingerly, moving as if the space between the two groups were littered with broken shards of glass. He reached where House still stood, poised in the doorway, and gave him a polite, tight smile; his eyes clouded with an indecipherable mix of emotions.

"Do we have to do this now? I kind of have other things on my mind" he queried softly. Wilson winced. Despite the fact that two men in front of him appeared to be completely isolated in their own bubble of tension, he couldn't help but empathise with the age-old weariness in the Doctor's quiet voice.

House stood immobile for a moment, fixing the Doctor with his stare like an etymologist pins a bug. Wilson felt his stomach clench with frustration at the knowledge that, despite his decades long association with the man he thought of as his best friend, he still was completely unable to predict what House would do next. He felt a strange mix of both relief and disappointment when, after a long strained moment, House stood back from the door and waved the Doctor in with exaggerated courtesy.

"By all means!" he murmured his face a bland mask. "Whatever you have planned next, I wouldn't miss it for the world!"

Wilson exchanged a look with Chase and Foreman as they hovered in the doorway behind the Doctor, both of them wincing in apprehension at the ominously polite tone in their boss's voice. Rose pushed past them roughly, to position herself firmly behind the Doctor's shoulder, her chin set in a pugnacious scowl.

"What can I do to help Doctor?" she asked pointedly, shooting a quelling glare at House, to which he seemed supremely oblivious.

The Doctor hiked his grin back into place as he glanced over at her. "Well, without meaning to sound too gruesome, I need to get my hands on some blood, as quickly as possible."

"Any particular type?" asked House softly, leaning sideways to casually pick a small stoppered test tube from the rack on the counter next to him, twirling it almost absent-mindedly over his knuckles. He continued in a cool tone, one eyebrow raised slightly "I'm sure you're aware that blood can vary quite a bit."

The Doctor's quick, sharp movements stilled once again as he turned back to House. His face emptied of all expression as his gaze followed the slosh of the dark red vial. His dark eyes were hard and distant as he muttered quietly "Oh I'm more aware of blood than you could ever imagine." Wilson felt a chill shiver over the nape of his neck as the Doctor muttered to himself in a harsh, bitter whisper. "I've seen far too much of the stuff. A veritable rainbow of slaughter."

In a sudden blur of motion the Doctor sprang forward and plucked the tube out of House's fingers, then whirled around to face the others before the other man had a chance to react. Wilson glanced over at his friend with a smirk, enjoying seeing him look nonplussed for a change. He looked back as the Doctor strode forward to clap an open palm over Chase's shoulder, and noted that the vial was no longer anywhere to be seen.

"Doctor Chase!" the Doctor practically bellowed, with excessive joviality. "Would you be so good as to direct me to a nice big bag of the red stuff? A Positive, if you happen to have any in stock." He flicked a beam over at Rose as he jerked his head towards where the Australian doctor still stood immobile. "I'm sure my able assistant would be more than happy to help."

Rose took the hint and walked over to where Chase stood, looking vaguely shell-shocked. She gave his elbow a gentle tug and he tossed his head sharply, blinking his eyes rapidly as if trying to bring things back into focus. "Um yes, I .. I suppose there should be some in the fridge.." he stammered hesitantly. Wilson saw him glance towards House, questioningly, but his boss ignored the mute appeal. House's eyes maintained their fixed, hard inspection of the Doctor's face, as if trying to dissect him with his glare. Chase shrugged and let Rose pull him towards the stainless steel tower in the corner of the room nearest to them, pulling it open to examine the rows of neatly labelled samples within.

The Doctor, meanwhile, had once again exploded into a flurry of activity, yanking open the drawers next to him with such force that an electronic pipette came tumbling out to hit the floor with an expensive sounding crunch.

"Oops, sorry!" the Doctor called cheerfully, sounding anything but. He delved his hand back into the jumble of equipment, emerging triumphantly with a catheter needle and a couple of lengths of tubing.

"This what you need Doctor?" Rose called from across the narrow room and the Doctor spun to face her as she tossed a plastic package in an underarm throw. He snatched it gracefully out of the air and then flipped it over in a quick one-handed manoeuvre so he could make out the label.

"Brilliant!" he beamed. "Just what the Doctor ordered!"

Dr Wilson watched, aghast, as the strange man rapidly folded himself down to the ground to sit cross legged, juggling his arm-load of medical equipment as he simultaneously shucked off his leather jacket. He watched in growing alarm as the patient before him started tying the rubber hose tightly around his bicep, flexing his fist until the veins stood out, stark against his pale skin.

Wilson glanced around in amazement at the compliant stillness of his colleagues. House was still not acknowledging his friend, his fathomless blue eyes remaining locked on the Doctor in a narrow-eyed expression of concentration. James turned his attention to where Dr Cuddy and Foreman still hovered in the doorway, and was startled by the unaccustomed blank looks of shock and disorientation that slackened each of their features.

He looked back to the Doctor to see him slide a needle into his forearm with a slight wince. "Now hang on a second!" he burst out, the words sounding over-loud in the enthralled stillness of the lab. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

As if Wilson's words had broken him out of some sort of trance, Foreman started then lurched forward urgently, one hand reaching out towards the blood bag. Rose took a couple of rapid sidesteps so that she could bring a hand up firmly against his chest to halt his forwards lunge.

"It's okay!" she spoke soothingly. "The Doctor knows what he's doing!"

Foreman stared at her in horror. "Like hell he does!" he bit out savagely. "You don't use whole blood in transfusions. Certainly not before it's been screened or tested for compatibility."

The Doctor looked up at him with a grin, his fingers still nimbly attaching the catheter into his vein. "Don't worry, I'm the quintessential Universal Donor!" he chirruped cheerfully, before pulling his mouth down into an exaggerated frown of noble long-suffering. "Not that the universe ever seems to appreciate what I have to offer!" He placed one spread palm dramatically over his heart in illustration of a grievous wound, whilst the other almost negligently thrust the bag of blood over his head. Before anyone could register what was happening, the Doctor's fist squeezed tightly around the plastic packet. Blood flowed down through the thick rubber hose and scarlet rivulets sprang out around where the needle emerged from his skin, as the liquid was forced into his body in a high pressure stream.

Foreman gaped at Wilson and then at House, who still leaned impassively against the counter, watching the strange tableaux. "Aren't you going to do anything?!" he demanded incredulously.

Wilson also looked over at House, feeling an urgent need for direction in the swirling confusion of the last few minutes, but was stunned to see a completely unaccustomed look of uncertainty flicker over his friend's haggard face.

House hesitated, seeming to be struggling with some internal debate, then his face cleared. "Yes!" he ground out with grim urgency. "I'm going to get a crash cart!"

He pushed away from the counter, but his movement was arrested as the figure on the floor suddenly arched in a spine-popping convulsion. Rose yelped in dismay and threw herself to her knees to cradle the Doctor's head as he slumped backwards, his eyes rolling back in his head until only flickering crescents of white remained. She cried out hoarsely in a voice strangled by horrified panic. "NO! Oh God, no. Not again!"


	16. Chapter 16

**Authors note: **Um, a couple of weeks between updates … a couple of months… what's the difference? It's all one big ball of wibbly, wobbly, timey-wimey stuff! Sorry! Last chapter anyway, apologies for it being so short. Just an epilogue to go.

* * *

**Chapter Sixteen**

**Doctoring the results**

Rose cradled the Doctor's head in her lap as the room exploded into noise and activity around her. She was vaguely aware of the urgent voices flashing back and forth over her head in a babble of incomprehensible jargon. Soft hands pulled gently at her shoulders and she glanced around to see Chase's face hovering over her.

"You have to back away and let us work on him".

Rose shook off the insistent croon with a desperate shake of her head, hugging the Doctor's thin shoulders closer to her chest. Her grip was broken a moment later as the Doctor's torso spasmed in a bone cracking tremor. Rose flinched away from the violent muscle-clenching shudders and Chase used her moment of hesitation to drag her away from the rigid body.

House swept in to kneel by his side, pouncing on the Doctor's carotid with two rigid fingers.

"Pulse thready and irregular. Must be a rapid onset acute haemolytic transfusion reaction. Foreman, get me 80mg of furosemide and a shot of epinephrine."

Foreman was already rapidly rummaging through the vials in the small storage fridge, but paused and glanced over his shoulder as the diagnosis cracked across the room. "Pressor drugs? But surely that could lead to kidney failure. Especially as we still don't know what caused his first collapse."

House didn't turn around, just gestured impatiently over his shoulder in a beckoning motion. "There's no point protecting his kidneys if his heart packs in. Get me the drugs. Don't make me have to get all ER and start shouting things like 'Stat'!"

The lash of his boss's voice propelled a frowning Foreman across the room to smack the filled syringe into House's gesturing palm. House fumbled it into his other hand, pausing a second to hold the vial up to the light and force a small stream of clear liquid to fountain from the tip, taking any air bubbles with it. He pushed the loose paper sleeve of the Doctor's gown up to expose the forearm. Despite lack of regular practice his fingers almost instinctively found the pressure points that made the veins stand out dark against too pale skin.

There was a flash of movement so sudden that it tore a yelp of surprise from Foreman where he had crouched by the patient's head. The Doctor's arm shot up to grasp House's wrist in a white knuckled grip, preventing the needle from sliding home.

The tableau froze for a second, House blinking in surprise at the Doctor's drawn features. A long sighed breath escaped the Doctor's lips, the vapour almost seeming to glisten in the harsh overhead lights, as his arched spine slowly sagged back against the floor tiles.

"No thank you." He muttered mildly, slight frown lines collecting between the tightly closed lids. "I'd prefer not dying again quite so soon. And if I could just get this to work, I shouldn't have to." his voice trailed off distractedly, but his grip remained tight on House's arm.

"Really?" House drawled thoughtfully, noting the 'again' for future contemplation. "Because you're doing an awfully good impression of a guy with a death wish." He twisted his wrist until he broke free of the Doctor's hold. Before he could reassess his patient's need for medication, he found himself being shouldered away as Rose flung herself back down at the Doctor's side.

She grabbed the Doctor's shoulders, giving him a rough shake as she sniffed back tears. "Can you please try to warn me before you go and do crazy stunts like that!" she cried in a wobbly, high-pitched shriek.

The Doctor winced, one hand reaching up to pat her on the shoulder. The gesture was sure and unfaltering, despite the fact that his eyes remained screwed shut.

"Do you mind?" he protested weakly, his other hand rising slowly to rub a forefinger along the crease between his eyes. "It's just that there's rather a lot going on in here at the moment without having to fend off an ultrasonic attack."

"What on earth did you think.."

The Doctor stopped her by holding up a finger in an imperious gesture, his eyes squeezing even tighter shut in unseen effort.

"One moment ... almost .. got it!" he ground out. "Yes!" The eyes sprang open, flashing sparkling chocolate triumph at the grinning Rose. He leapt to his feet in a smooth motion, pulling the catheter tube from his arm and tossing the empty blood bag to Chase, who fumbled the crumpled packet in a surprised catch. The Doctor made a fist and massaged the torn skin where the needle had been, using the hem of his robe to dab at the scarlet rivulets that ran down towards his wrist.

"Hang on; you should take a look at this. It's not often I'm around people who might appreciate the subtleties of my work." He spun towards the bench, snatching up a clean test tube which he used to scrape up some of the escaping blood. He held his thumb over the top of the tube giving it a flourishing shake as if mixing a cocktail, then bent over the bench to place a drop onto a microscope smear slide.

He slipped the slide under the microscope and peered down with a big grin. "Oh that is a thing of beauty!" be breathed. He turned and tossed the vial towards House, who snatched it out of the air one-handed. "Now that one you can keep!" beamed the Doctor with a wink.

House glared at him for a moment then limped forward, bumping the Doctor to one side with an impatient swipe of his shoulder in order to lean over the microscope. There was a long moment of silence where the onlookers all waited for his reaction. There was a general feeling of anticlimax that washed around the room when House merely straightened without a word and leaned back against the counter-top in silent thought, his mouth a compressed line.

Wilson was the one who moved first, striding over to stand at his friend's shoulder. "What's going on?" he muttered quietly out the corner of his mouth.

House gave a small shake of his head, taking a step to the side to leave the microscope clear. Wilson looked at him quizzically for a moment, then leaned in to peer down the lens. He reared back in confusion. "But this isn't like ... It's just normal red blood cells."

"Well, they're a bit better than normal!" exclaimed the Doctor in a hurt tone. "If the magnification was better on that thing you'd see that the A antigens are distributed along the surface of the cells in a rather nifty fractal pattern." He shrugged modestly, treating Wilson to his best self-depreciating grin. "It's the attention to detail that marks a true artiste!"

His noble pose was ruined by a hard punch to the upper arm. He turned a wounded gaze on Rose. "What was that for?"

She grinned. "I thought that was what you keep me around for. Knocking you down to size when you're getting too uppity!" He let out a laugh when she switched the fist to an insistent poking finger. "Instead of giving us an art appreciation lesson, would you mind explaining to me why you just did that? You scared me half to death!"

The Doctor took a breath but before he could answer Rose interrupted him, her smooth features suddenly crumpled in alarm. "Hang on a minute, if you're A Positive now thanks to that stressful stunt you pulled, does that mean you're going to go all Land of the Living Dead on me like the others around here?"

The Doctor cocked his head in contemplation then flung a long arm around her neck, pulling her towards him and burying his nose in the dark roots of her blonde hair. "Oi! What'chya doing!" she squealed, pushing him away to arm's length.

"Just checking to see if I'd developed an overpowering appetite for brains." He licked his lips thoughtfully before giving her a mischievous grin. "I think you're safe!" He knuckled her forehead affectionately, ignoring her affronted scowl.

"Right then!" He cried decisively, spinning round to scoop up his leather jacket from where it lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. "I think we need a change of setting for our final scene." He ushered the crowd of doctors to precede him out of the room with an impatient gesture, but paused as his eyes fell on House. "But I suppose we could take the lift this time. I would hate for Dr House to miss the opportunity of taking part in my standing ovation."

He ignored House's snort of derision as he swept out the door, leaving the others to follow in his wake.

House and Wilson were left staring after the procession in bemusement.

"I'm really starting to hate that guy!" House muttered.

Wilson cocked an eyebrow at him. "Well of course you do!" he drawled dryly. "There's only room for one self-destructive, eco-centric alpha dog in this hospital."

House shot him a look, then set off after the retreating backs. "Damn right! And I won't just start around here whilst he waltzes off with my bitches." He called back over his shoulder. "It's taken me ages to House-train Chase".

The pair caught up to the group as they gathered around the elevators overlooking the main foyer. The Doctor turned to them with an expansive gesture. "Keep up fellas!" he called, just as the shining brass doors behind him parted with a soft chime.

Dr Cameron stepped out, her arms crossed hesitantly over the starched white of her lab-coat. She stared uncertainly around the startled faces arrayed before her before shrugging back her shoulders and setting her chin into a more belligerent line.

"Could somebody please explain to me" she started in a low and dangerous tone "why I just woke up perched on the edge of the building with a crowd of confused people, none of whom remembered getting up there?"

"Oh that's not fair!" the Doctor moaned, his lips puckered in a petulant frown. "It would have been so much more dramatic if we'd made it up to the roof before it took effect!"

Cameron fixed him with an evil glare. "I notice you haven't answered my question!" she ground out, then paused running her tongue over her bottom lip in a distracted fashion. "But first I need to find a vending machine." She shrugged, a look of confusion crossing her face. "It seems I really, really need a cup of tea."


	17. Chapter 17

**Authors note: **Oh yeah! Despite my best intentions I kind of forgot to finish this didn't I? It would be only polite to round things up and explain what the heck is going on. Sorry for the delay! Now what story should I tackle next? Suggestions gratefully received, although no promises on completing any or all any time this century!

* * *

**Chapter Seventeen**

**Discharge**

The Doctor let out an almost girlish giggle of glee as he flung an arm around the stiff shoulders of the deeply affronted Dr Cameron.

"See Rose!" he crowed. "I've always said there was no problem on Earth that couldn't be fixed by sitting down with a nice cup of tea. Turns out that that was an understatement!"

Cameron shrugged away from the arm, taking a step backwards as she stared around the gathering crowd in alarm. She seemed to gather some measure of reassurance as her eyes alighted on a familiar limping figure arriving at the rear of the gathering.

Chase pushed his way to the front of the group, grasping the brown haired doctor by the shoulder as he peered intently into her slightly dilated eyes. "Alison! Are you feeling okay?" he demanded urgently. "You were practically cataleptic a few minutes ago."

"Oh, she'll probably feel a bit groggy for a while. Coming out from under a blood control spell is bound to knock a few brain cells out of alignment!" the Doctor commented blithely, before patting the slim woman on her other shoulder. "Still, could be worse, I once knew a man who was hypnotised and never snapped out of it. Ended up chasing anything in a dress. What's worse, was that it didn't even suit him."

Cameron blinked at this in slack-jawed astonishment. It was Cuddy's voice that cracked out in incredulous scorn at his statements. "Are you trying to say half of my staff have been placed under some sort of magic spell?"

The Doctor grinned at her whilst waving his hand in a rather patronising gesture. "Weeeelll" he drawled "Only magic as defined by Clarke's third law*. In actuality, the Sycorax were transmitting a stream of Arctron energy, focussed through a specific biocellular sample, in order to override the neuroreceptors in their victims' brains. Comes across like a cheap bit of voodoo to scare the pants off of a primitive society leaving them ripe for a takeover."

Cuddy blinked at him for a moment before throwing both hands up in frustration. "I don't believe this!" She exploded. "This whole situation is just completely impossible."

The Doctor grinned. "Ah, well that's where Clarke's second law, and my personal favourite, comes in. '_The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible_.'" He leaned forward to give her a conspiratorial wink. "I admit I gave Arthur a bit of help with that one, it's kind of my specialty!"

Rose gave a snort from behind him, folding her arms in fond exasperation. "Go on then, give them the technobabble speech!" she urged him with a grin. "You won't be satisfied until we can all appreciate just how you brilliantly you've managed to save the day again!"

The Doctor spun to give her a glare of affronted dignity, the hem of his paper gown flapping around his knees. The frown lasted all of three seconds before it crumpled into a cheeky grin. "Oh well, it was sort of brilliant now that you come to mention it. There aren't many people who have such supreme physiological control of their autonomic cellular processes to be able to bioengineer a worldwide signal hack using their own body as a transmitter." He shrugged in exaggerated modesty. "I couldn't resist the elegance of the solution, considering our current surroundings. You could even call it haematopoetic*"

House rolled his eyes and let out a brief snort and the Doctor stood on his bare tiptoes to peer over the shoulders of Chase and Foreman to bathe him with his most brilliant grin.

"See? It's all worked out for the best. If we had ended up in London like I'd planned, no-one would have got that pun!" The grin vanished as quickly as it had come as the Doctor's mobile features pulled themselves into a reproachful pout. "Although, whilst I have stopped expecting applause for my brilliance, I was kind of hoping for more than a snort of derision!" he grumbled. "Do you know how hard it is to manipulate the formation of 2.4 million erythrocytes a second?" He flung an arm around Rose's shoulders, giving her a squeeze whilst continuing "Especially whilst undergoing a well meaning ultrasonic attack". Rose took a few seconds to stiffen in indignation at the insult but was distracted as she noticed a small grimace of genuine discomfort cutting creases in the Doctor's forehead.

"You're okay, though, right?" she demanded in sudden alarm, shifting beneath his arm until she could slide her own in a protective embrace around the skinny ribcage.

He smiled down at her soothingly. "'Course I'm okay! I always am aren't I?" He raised his free hand to run long fingers through the messy fringe at his left temple. "I just have a bit of a …"

He froze as a movement caught his eye. Raising one eyebrow, he cast an interested glance over the trim figure of the white-coated doctor standing before him, her arm raised to her head in an eerily parallel gesture.

"Are _you_ alright Dr Cameron?" he asked in a suddenly intent voice, breaking free from Rose's protective embrace.

Cameron lowered her arm slowly to her side, shrugging herself out of a bewildered daydream. "I… I think so" she stammered, then winced. "Apart from what feels like a galactic sized hangover!" she grumbled, then flinched as the Doctor's hands shot up to hover a few inches from either side of her forehead.

"May I?" he asked quietly. Then, ignoring her look of confusion, he touched feather light fingertips to the corners of her eyebrows.

The Doctor closed his eyes in concentration for a moment and then dropped his arms, letting out a quiet "Ah!" He shuffled back, flicking a rather sheepish grin towards Rose. "Ooops!"

House's voice cracked out in cold suspicion "Ooops? What 'oops'?"

The Doctor turned towards him and shrugged nonchalantly, holding his hand up palm out in a conciliatory gesture, although the way he shifted from foot to foot gave a distinct impression of concealed embarrassment. "I may have underestimated the power of the signal just a smidge" he murmured, holding his finger and thumb in front of his face to indicate a trivial gap. "Well, I was still awash with Arctron energy myself after my regeneration" he muttered defensively to no-one in particular. He turned back to face Cameron again, talking soothingly. "Now it's nothing to be alarmed about, but I may have left behind in you and the others a slight… echo."

Alison raised perfectly sculpted eyebrows in bewildered alarm. "What?" she queried in a deeply confused tone.

The Doctor patted her reassuringly on the shoulder once more. "Oh it's nothing to be worried about really, but I may have left a portion of the planet's population a little … um .. Doctored!"

Rose let out an amazed bark of laughter. "Oh God!" she snorted. "Be afraid! Be very afraid!" she ground out sardonically, ignoring the Doctor's glare of disapproval.

"It won't be permanent!" he snapped at her huffily before turning back to Cameron. "Red blood cells have a limited lifespan in the body before they're replaced. You should be back to normal in … oooooh .." he paused for a guilty second before continuing "a maximum of three to four months." He smiled a sickly grin at her blank face. "But in the meantime you might want to stay away from a few things, like strong magnetic fields, and raspberry jam, the kind with the seeds in. Oh and cats, I never could get the hang of cats. Thursday mornings may get a bit interesting for a while, and you probably shouldn't…" He trailed off as he detected Rose's growing grin. "Okay, okay, I might have been a little premature on the whole 'elegance' thing, but I did break the hypnotic lock and so have eliminated the Sycorax's whole blackmail 'We can make millions jump to their death unless you surrender' ploy." He squared his shoulders inside the overlarge leather jacket. "All that remains is to take a little trip upstairs to their spaceship and negotiate a truce, now that we're in a stronger bargaining position…"

His words were cut off as the large foyer was suddenly flooded with a blinding white light as the whole of the mirrored front of the hospital lit up. The glass panes rattled in their frames as a thunderclap echoed out beneath a night sky that was momentarily brighter than the brightest New Jersey day.

The Doctor froze for a moment, then darted forward, barging his way between the frozen forms of Chase and Foreman to hurl himself headlong down the staircase to the main lobby below. Rose barely lost a second before she was off after him, the others breaking out of their startled immobility to follow more slowly a moment later.

They caught up to him just outside the main doors of the hospital. He was standing barefoot on the tarmac outside, staring up bleakly at the falling snow, the slim blue-tipped wand clutched forlornly in one hand.

Rose reached out a tentative hand towards him. "What's wrong, Doctor?" she queried softly, then flinched back as he lowered his eyes to pierce her with a tight glare of unbearable bitterness.

"Oh, just the usual human response" he bit out cynically. "A whole head for an eye, isn't that the philosophy?" His shoulders slumped in defeat as he glanced down at the sonic screwdriver in his hand. "It looks like someone's gotten their hands on some alien tech and worked out how to use it." he muttered, then continued softly, almost below hearing. "You know sometimes I wonder if I have it the right way round, believing that I'm protecting humanity from the monsters."

There was an awkward frozen stillness that hung in the cold air of the barren threshold, before Rose reached out a hand again, laying it gently on the Doctor's arm.

"At least come inside out of this snow before you catch cold" she murmured, glancing down at his bare legs.

The Doctor's jaw loosened slightly as he looked down at her. "It's not snow." he informed her dully. "It's ash. The remains of the Sycorax spaceship breaking up in the atmosphere after someone blew it out of the sky." He smiled bleakly. "I guess my negotiation skills won't be needed after all."

Chase spoke up hesitantly from the doorway. "But isn't this a good thing? Weren't the … um … Sycorax" he stumbled over the word, his voice laced with uncertainty and embarrassment. "Weren't they the bad guys?"

The Doctor snorted softly, his expression still grim as he let Rose gently tug him towards the cover of the entryway. "I guess everything's relative" he muttered quietly. The harsh lines of his face softened thoughtfully as he watched Dr Cameron reach out a hand to catch one of the falling gray flakes on a forefinger before closing her eyes with a shudder and turning away.

* * *

House collapsed back into his chair, gazing with vacant eyes across the clutter of his desk, his mind a million miles away. He reached absent-mindedly for his oversized tennis ball with one hand whilst listening to the muted uproar of the hospital drifting from the rooms all around his office. No-one was quite clear on what exactly had transpired that cold Christmas morning, and the uncertainty was fuelling the hysteria and mindless panic until the whole building resembled an overturned ant heap.

There had been pandemonium as a belated rush of bewildered hospital staff, patients and visitors, drawn by the flash of light, streamed out of the hospital and clustered around Cuddy like flies on dung. In the heaving and shouting press of people, House had lost sight of the Doctor and his companion, and no-one seemed inclined to give him a sensible answer as to where they'd gone.

House leaned back in his seat, levering his long denim clad legs up until they rested, crossed at the ankles, on the edge of his desk, providing a little relief from the throbbing pain that was cramping his ravaged thigh muscle more insistently than normal. He tossed the tennis ball to his left hand and reached his right into the tight pocket of his jeans, pulling loose the small test tube of blood that his mysterious patient had tossed to him, and which was all that he had to remember him by. Much to his chagrin, by the time he'd brutally elbowed his way out of the mêlée and returned to the lab, it had been annoyingly thoroughly and systematically denuded of any traces of the evening's excitement.

He stared thoughtfully at the tube, pivoting it up and down between two fingers until it resembled one of those drinking bird desk-toys. The dark viscous liquid sloshed backwards and forwards in a depressingly familiar way.

He wasn't quite sure how long he'd sat there, in the gradually brightening room, but he was aware of the electric sensation of another personality invading his sanctum a good few seconds before the soft, apologetic cough broke the silence.

He looked up, his iceberg cool gaze clashing with a warm burnt umber intensity. There was a complicated pause as a hundred conversational gambits were clearly considered and discarded.

It was the Doctor who made the first move, crossing over from the doorway to drag the leather recliner from the corner of the office to a more conversational distance in front of House's desk, then flopping down into it with a whoomph of exhaustion.

House raised an eyebrow at the rumpled man in front of him, taking in the creased, tight fitting brown pinstripe suit and the long brown trenchcoat that seemed to sit easily on his lanky frame.

"I'm surprised to see you back here." House finally grated out. "I had you pegged for a more love 'em and leave 'em type and to hell with the aftermath!"

The Doctor cocked his head slightly, a tight smile pulling at his pointed features. "I suppose I am, in a manner of speaking. But I can't abide loose ends" he murmured softly.

House tightened his fist over the tube of blood, but the Doctor wasn't looking at that. His gaze never wavered from House's face. "Discounting for a moment your dubious intentions and understandable ignorance, it occurs to me that, despite everything, I suppose you could say that I owe you my life." The Doctor's speech was slightly halting and he shifted slightly in the low chair, obviously uncomfortable under House's slight smirk.

House raised the other eyebrow, abandoning his nonchalant pose and letting his feet fall down from the desk as he leant forward intently.

"And are you going to repay that debt by giving me a few straight answers?" he demanded hotly.

The Doctor didn't flinch from the sudden belligerence. He stared calmly at House, one side of his mouth quirked in a crooked grin.

"That depends" he spoke in an affable tone, steepling his fingers together lightly beneath his chin. "On whether you have the courage to ask the right questions."

House narrowed his eyes, the muscles of his jaw tightening as he leaned forward, elbows on knees, to pierce the shorter man with a hostile gaze.

There was a long expectant pause, then House abruptly broke eye contact with a violent shake of his head. "This is ridiculous!" he spat out. "I know what you want me to think but that sort of thing is pure escapist fantasy for weak-minded idiots who can't face dealing with the real problems before them. I'm a doctor. I believe in the rational, the explainable." He leaned back in his chair away from the other man. "I may not know exactly what's been going on here. Static discharge, mass hypnosis, elaborate government conspiracies…" he paused in his breathless rant, looking back at the still figure in front of him "Weird mutated freaks … Who knows! But there will _be_ answers, and they will be logical!"

His voice had risen to a near shout but was cut short by the Doctor's soft snort. "Oh give it a rest!" the other man mocked cuttingly. "I've been hearing a lot about you and you are not renowned for your logical and considered approach to problem solving. You go with your instincts. With what feels right at the time, even sometimes against all evidence to the contrary. And you make it work for you." The Doctor awarded him with a dazzling grin. "That's what makes us both so fantastic!" he beamed.

House's mouth pulled into a reluctant half-smile at the arrogance but he remained silent. The Doctor leaned forward, his gaze softening in sympathy. "All I'm asking for here is a little faith in the unexplained. I think it would do you a world of good, although I can see that that doesn't come easy to you."

"You want me to just go with your flow?" House asked cynically. "I bet there are a few drowned swimmers in your wake who regret making that decision."

The Doctor tilted his head in weary acknowledgement of that, then in a sudden impulsive gesture, darted a hand into the pocket of his long brown coat. House watched uncertainly as the man fumbled around for a distracted few seconds, muttering to himself as more of his arm disappeared into the mysterious recesses of the lining.

"Aha!" he exclaimed triumphantly, pulling out a fist full of junk and examining it with interest. He pulled a bit of fluff from an old baby-shaped jelly sweet and popped it absent-mindedly into his mouth. "I knew I had this left!" he muttered rather indistinctly, peering at his haul. He was left with a couple of funny shaped foreign coins, a small furry ball of fluff that House could have sworn twitched in the non-existent breeze, and a large red and yellow medicine capsule. The Doctor picked the pill up carefully between thumb and forefinger, thrusting the rest of the handful back into his pocket, and placed it delicately on the desk in front of House.

"It's a pain pill. From a little planet not that far in advance of yours. Picked it up a few decades back. When I last wore this coat in fact, but it should still be good." He winked at House knowingly. "Should knock the socks off your regular Vicodin and last a fair bit longer too!" he whispered conspiratorially, then leaned back pensively. "You could try analysing it if you like but you should know that it's a rather fragile little molecule." he mused. "Wouldn't stand up well to testing. I'm guessing that you're not above a bit of a gamble but remember, the House doesn't always win." He paused, fixing House with a challenging look before leaping to his feet and striding dynamically to the door in a swirl of coat tails. He looked back for a moment, meeting distrustful, cynical blue eyes.

"I guess it's your choice then." He called back, his dark eyes serious for a moment. "It comes down to whether you'd prefer to know or to believe."

The moment of gravity passed and the Doctor erupted once more into a mischievous grin. "Guess I'll see you around then Doctor!" He called cheerfully. "Ciao for now!"

And with that he was gone, leaving House staring thoughtfully after him.

* * *

Footnotes:

**Clarke's Third Law: **Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

**Haematopoietic: ****Definition **_adjective_ 'Of, or pertaining to, haematopoiesis, which is the formation of blood in the body.'


End file.
